Unfortunately there is a small handful of people in the next level down (middle management) who somehow got hired into ecobee despite being neither capable nor qualified as either individual contributors or people leaders and the exec leadership team won't seem to address this. Our design team for example doesn't even have anyone in the leadership chain with real UX design experience (vs. just visual or UI design or experience managing designers but not actually doing). We were hoping the backfill for our departed UX director would fill that gap but unfortunately the position got rolled up into the VP Product who, while a nice enough person, also lacks hands-on understanding of the UX discipline. These underqualified middle managers are unfortunately insecure and toxic, ruling through fear and intimidation, seemingly afraid of being exposed, defaulting to blaming their direct reports and other contributors for both real and fictional issues to uphold their false narrative and have even gone so far as to lay off some. For whatever reason these behaviors from managers have been allowed to continue unchecked, and as a result innocent yet capable/skilled employees have been gaslit and forced to leave the company, both voluntarily and involuntarily.
