Countless meetings every week. Usually no more than 2 hours of efficient uninterrupted work possible. A bit better recently with (almost) "meetings free days" on Mondays and Fridays but still switching contexts is a great obstacle to get things done.
Jira flow obsessed manager with a lot of tickets containing only a title without any description because: "we already discussed it, don't you remember?" and "ask a team member if you don't get it".
There are also "fake" tasks which replace "real" tasks for some time in sprints (like if something is unclear or dependant on something external in the original one). From my perspective it looks like making a good impression on the reports.
Two independent boards for sprint tasks: one in Jira and one in the other one. Special meeting to move tasks onto the other board according to expectations of their estimate dates. Assigning these tasks in the other one without syncing changes with Jira. Manual copy pasting all the sprint tasks from Jira to the other one before the meeting (actually this is done by one of the employees).
In the apps development: great opposition to any critique or suggestions about the codebase if the changes are not from the team lead. The reasons are usually the following:
- we are doing it like that because that's how we are doing it.
- this one was the team lead's decision, no one knows why but it should be like that.
- it might be unclear at first sight [or the second one], but eventually you will get used to it (if you can keep it in mind all the time). New people also get used to it eventually. (this one is specifically about naming).
In general: great opposition to any suggestion overall with an outcome like: thank you for your great input, but could you please avoid sharing it with the team? otherwise they will feel frustrated and under the impression that their work was/is bad (every suggestion was in a form of a question about the reasons behind something, explanations why it might be inconvenient and how it can be improved).
With all the good words about "do what's best for the team" you are not welcome to help your team members with a task that can take up to 2 months while you can solve it in 2 days, because you dealt with it in the past and are aware of possible obstacles.
Every 2 weeks you have to play a retrospective game:
- How can you describe the last sprint in a single tweet?
- If you were going to a desert island, what kind of dish you would bring with you?
This is forced from the team lead who never participates in it and is just an observer. Also there is never any tangible outcome out of it.
Fortunately there is also a bit of time left for the real retro with issues within the previous sprint and ways to fix it.
It is absolutely unclear what the team lead is doing apart from participation in meetings. Sometimes participation in the technical discussions but like: this is my vision and it should be done this way because I like it (put in nicer words). Because of that exact reason I personally preferred discussing technical matters with a senior team member who was giving a much better feedback and could share proper reasons behind some decisions/proposals.
Another thing is about expectations. When you do something the team lead does not like, you will get a dialogue similar to:
TeamLead: I expected you to do it like that and like that.
Me: And I did it exactly like that. You can check it here and there.
TeamLead: Well...yes, but there is not enough zeal in it.
One-on-one meetings are quite useless.
At first you get some feedback about what to work on, fix and improve. Later you got a confirmation about your improvements. But in the end you get the feedback that nothing [from the time of the first feedback] has really changed in the vision of the team lead. So you are basicaly in a situation where you think you had improved your work and can focus on other things but you actually had not.
In case of team issues there is a huge chance the team lead will tell you: I don't want to deal with it, if you want you can handle it yourself. (This one is an actual quote response about some health issues that affected a few team members and in turn affected the work because people got sick).
If you want a promotion, (let's say from junior to middle or from middle to senior) it's better to find another company. Here the management will hire another person rather than let you grow (this tiny detail was discovered accidentally). There is also no experience in letting people move to different departments (I was told so during the interview with the CTO).
