Disorganized project management with Low Pay and high stress - Software Engineer DEKA Research and Development Employee Review

First I want to say that employees have been asked to review DEKA on glass door during ones yearly performance reviews. Then there is the wink wink, but only if it will be positive. This is a common theme within the company of not looking at what they are doing wrong, but instead say others are incorrect. This lack of introspection is ingrained in to the culture at DEKA at many levels. Your experience at DEKA will be wildly different based on the project you are on. I can only relay my experiences at DEKA and admit it may be different then a SWE on another project. Each project is treated as their own little startup with a dedicated team and budget. This is great until you realize that you now have 10 different companies with 10 different management styles trying to do things 10 different ways. There is a Standard Operating Procedure that guides projects. It a set of 60 documents where 10 of them is directly concerning software. The problem though is these documents have not been updated since the 1990's and is written using Waterfall as the model. So the vast majority of projects just do their own thing, because nobody has the responsibility of working for DEKA and making DEKA better oppose to the project they are assigned to. DEKA is about getting work done and through that career growth is not something that is cultivated as more than lip service during your yearly performances review. I've asked for 5 years in a row that I would like to work on a different project and have yet received an opportunity as they are always "working on it". Basically I'm so important to my current project that me leaving would devastated it. Bus factor is another problem at DEKA. They like to hire the bare minimum to save has much money as possible. I've seen a SWE leaving the company have large repercussions of nobody knowing that piece of software. DEKA has about 600 Engineers, but it could easily have 1000 if they were no so frugal. The frugality makes even less sense when you realize they are charging the customer for the work we are doing which should be covering salaries. DEKA gets lots of projects because of the CEO, but also because they can undercut the competition. I wouldn't say it's slave labor, but all of the top performers at DEKA could easily be making 50% more at a company that values their employees time and skill. Every project I've been on has been missed multiple deadlines due to the lack of communication of priorities, where the only empathy is work harder or work the weekend. This is a very disrespectful stance to take because as an SWE asking me to work harder implies that I have not been giving a good faith effort. The larger problem at DEKA as a company is that they are so focused on been small and agile like a startup is they loose sight established ways to run a project and at the top of that list is planning. DEKA projects are adhoc at many levels. There are no road maps where you can see where we are going or clearly prioritized task lists to drive your work. It's just work on this today, but tomorrow there may be a fire that you have to pivot. This constantly happens and project deadlines are blown by months at a time. As I said previously there is no thought to career growth at DEKA. From HRs perspective everybody is a "Technical Contributor" or "Lead Technical Contributor". That means you salary is very political since there is no clear pay bands. A Senior on one project may be a junior or another, so clear definitions of level is not found at DEKA and mostly based off of time services. So if you are around long enough you are just assumed to be senior regardless on if you can actually do the work and meet expectations of your boss. This means all the pressure is on the Team Leads and the job nobody really wants in the company unless you like playing with fire. As a Team Lead you have to work with the hand you are given and this means SWEs can be thrown into positions they are not ready for. This is then a downward spiral of check in the box work or compromising on quality in the name of victory. There are no hiring standards at DEKA so somebody I would say is a no hire could still be hired by another project. Interviews are mostly just people asking you questions and expecting you to get the right answer. How you get there is less important then saying the answer and this compounds problems already existing in DEKA. We talk a lot about mentoring at DEKA, but it doesn't really exists in the way you want. Mentoring is basically people will answer your questions, but you are never assigned a SWE who is responsible for you getting up to speed and teaching you how to produce quality work. I've seen junior people just left to their own devices for weeks, because nobody has time to work with them. Senior SWEs are not encouraged to mentor which is a large part of the problem. This is because it's not a task for you but just extra credit work on your own time. You don't get less work if you need to mentor, you still get the same amount, but now you have to spend a couple hours per day getting a new person up to speed. I could go into so many topics, but I feel this has gotten long winded. Overall DEKA is not a place you really want to work at for a long period of time unless you just want to coast at the end of your career for a paycheck. If you value a great culture with a dedication to high quality work then DEKA will drive you insane. You will not acquire skills needed to work at top companies like Google working at DEKA for years. Get in and get out is what I would recommend for anybody at DEKA. I know I have stayed at DEKA way too long and it has hurt my career in terms of skill and lost wages.