- Senior leadership is a shambles. A CTO who listens to no one and tries to force out those who disagree, while spending too much time engineering (rather than leaving it to the much more qualified people he employs).
- You'll do well if you 'toe the line', rather than voice your own opinions and dare to disagree with leadership.
- 'Value Streams' were always a disaster, huge amounts of management leading to little work actually getting done (note the inability to deliver new products in anything approaching a timely fashion).
- While flexible work has been the case, the company is now attempting to push people back into the office, despite many having built their lives around the promise of flexible working.
- Leadership (especially the CTO) now pushing hard an 'AI first' approach to engineering, whether or not this is the best approach.
My summary really is this:
If you're the kind of engineer who wants to keep their head down, have a stable/comfortable job, and enjoy some interesting tech, Atom is a great place to be and i would highly recommend it.
If you prefer to be engaged in the business and feel a part of something larger than yourself, making a difference beyond just the code that you write, I would avoid Atom. You'll see areas where you could have a huge impact and be unable to do anything about them. Decisions made by senior leadership that are obviously silly to people on the ground will slowly drive you insane.
My feelings are clearly complex, Atom gave me alot, but has become the sort of place that i would now avoid. If nothing else, it was clear upon my decision to leave after 5 years of dedicated service that nobody in leadership could have cared less (while those who i worked with daily were sad to see me go, and i likewise was sad to leave them / still am).
