The culture used to be great. Leadership was communicative. Expectations were set. They allowed us many freedoms to build our own culture. But like a light switch, their whole outlook changed; suddenly, revenue was not good, and suddenly, we had to cut jobs. I got laid off with no warning at all. via an email telling me "My work mattered." I never felt so disposable in my life. They were definitely warning signs I ignored for the sake of doing my work and keeping the culture we built alive. But in the end, we are just disposable to these people; of course, their salaries were not affected at all, just cut people with no warning, citing "business needs."
Classic inner-circle company: the few at the top get the biggest slice. There were some "leadership" people I never even heard from, not even in quarterly meetings, probably making my salary three times and then some.
This wasn't a problem at the start, but Product slowly wanted to have hands and eyes on everything engineering does. Micromanaging from other areas slowly started to creep in as well. I'm 100% convinced they just want to set Product up to Vibecode directly and cut engineering entirely.
An extreme fake positivity aura engulfs anything outside engineering until they can't keep it up, and they have to show their true colors.
