An unorganized mess and worst developer experience I have had to date - Frontend Engineer GenEx Institute Employee Review

Working at this company was a challenging experience due to a fundamental disconnect between the people responsible for planning and those responsible for implementation. The planning process often felt rushed and not thoroughly thought-out, and there was a culture of "you're not working hard enough" that made it challenging for employees to push back on unrealistic timelines. In my time at the company, I was repeatedly told that we needed to push more and shoehorn as many features as possible, regardless of whether they were properly scoped out. This emphasis on output over quality and attention to detail resulted in a lack of commitment to keeping up with industry standards, even when there were plans to migrate to a more modern tech stack which did not happen. The project management process was a mess. Briefs were often half-baked and extremely vague, making it difficult to understand exactly what was expected from assignments. At times, briefs would even contradict themselves or relevant attached screenshots, and when asked for clarification, the response was often that there was not enough time to update the brief. This issue was compounded by the fact that there was a disconnect between the people scoping out the work and those implementing it, with the former not being particularly technical. This lack of technical knowledge made communication difficult and frustrating, with a lot of back and forth needed to clarify expectations. Tools were not used effectively, with communication about tickets and development happening in Slack rather than in the project management software. Moreover, the version of Slack used was the free version, which meant that older information was not accessible if needed. This unproductive way of working required employees to keep track of more than 10 different threads, with information related to the same ticket mentioned in several different places, making it impossible to track progress. There was also the constant need to update the project manager on what you were working on and commit to timelines for tickets that weren't properly scoped out. Micromanagement was invasive and pervasive, with multiple check-ins per day to ensure that employees were working, and progress reports documenting work done throughout the day leading to the feeling that the company did not trust it’s employees. Asking for help from project management on certain topics felt extremely unwelcoming, with responses like "You should know this" or "The senior would have known exactly what I was talking about". This is undair as I had limmited exposure and context working on the platform at this point in time. The combination of micromanagement, pressure to deliver features as quickly as possible, incomplete and vague briefs, and keeping track of an unorganized project management system made the experience a complete nightmare. The CEO was a man with vision, but he demonstrated a severe disconnect with the platform his company had built. He had a tendency to chase trends and throw around buzzwords like AI, Web 3, and Blockchain without understanding how they would meaningfully integrate with the platform. This led to multiple shifts in company focus in the six months I was there, which caused more chaos than anything else, and resulted in the addition of features to an already bloated platform that could have used time to refine what was already there. Finally, management was a complete disaster. Besides the lack of planning, misguided and often changing company direction, micromanagement, and misuse of tools, the company also lacked procedure and things were made up in the moment. Diversity was sparse, with no plan for improvement, and the HR department was disorganized and sometimes unresponsive on pressing matters. The company even tried to enforce unethical and illegal practices on employees, which I had to circumvent with the help of legal advice. Overall, my experience with this company was overwhelmingly negative, and I would not recommend it to anyone who values their sanity.