A "tech" "startup" that is extremely out of touch with itself and its employees - Client Services Engineer Synthesis Technology Employee Review

-Office politics were a big strain: advertised as a "startup" at interview, but politics in the workplace reflected anything but -No real opportunities for career advancement. The only move is to one of very few project manager positions. This has led to people being promoted to project manager positions without a real need for it. Plenty of teams only have a manager and one employee underneath. -Upper management is extremely out of touch with the reality of the company. They think there's a great culture, when there's lots of dissatisfaction across a multitude of teams. Job postings advertise whirlyball, ping pong daily and wine tastings when none of those things have happened in 2+ years. There is no real vision for the company's future, no goal for us to push for as a whole. Just the same old tech support for clients day in and day out, with very few "exciting" projects sprinkled in (i.e. boring). -Very opaque and undocumented policies. Company's earnings and growth is hidden from the employees. Time-off policies have very weird rules for no good reason. For example, you can't take half a personal day, you must take a full one, no exceptions. BUT you can take a half vacation day for some reason. -Job becomes extremely boring, very quickly, with no real opportunity to pick up new skills after you get a grasp of the product. The interface is literally unchanged from 2001 and it's hideous. There is no real effort to upgrade the user interface. Client dissatisfaction with the product is real, management tries to delude themselves from that fact. -Nepotism. -Upper Management is not proactive at all and only act on making changes to the product once the client complains. There's no go-getter attitude with their vision, they rely on outdated technology, and if they don't invest in the company's vision themselves, why would they expect their employees to do so?