- It was very difficult for me to understand the expectations of my manager. It felt like a toss up each week if they would be happy with my performance or not. As an example, at the friday at end of my PIP, I was told I was doing well enough to be kept on. On Monday I was fired, with the reasoning being that I had received more help than they realized. This was despite being told that I should lean on two specific engineers as much as I needed through the process. Working to parse expectations and communicate them with multiple groups was one of my main job functions previously that I excelled in, so I felt that this was more on the company than me. - I was actively discouraged from helping teammates and seeking help from others. A few times when I did this instead of getting my code done within 24/48 hours I was reprimanded that I need to get my code done first. This may be a work environment that suits some, but it didn't fit my style of work which is highly collaborative and varied. I tend to be interested in the whole picture and love mentoring and acting as a force multiplier, but I felt silo'd into a "churn out code independently" role that I was ultimately unhappy in. - The work-life balance is verbally said to be good, but in practicality I was expected to work extra hours to keep up and meet certain deadline expectations. For example, I was told on Monday at 5 that there was an interview that needed translating from Go to Java before 12 pm the next day. I was told that it was critical to be done, so I stayed up very late to finish it. They then said they were grateful that I stayed up to do it, but that they wanted me to know they didnt expect me to do that. I called out that they didnt verbally ask me to but they functionally did because there's no way that work wouldve been done without that effort. I was also told directly that I should work an extra hour or two each day to get up to speed. IMO this should be taken into account in the onboarding process, not expect people to work extra to keep up. - Engineering practices are said to be open to discussion, but if you disagree with one of a few engineers then your thoughts will be buried in their process of RFCs, backlogs, eng investments. Ideas they like get immediately worked on or prioritized right away, but if they have differences of opinion they go in the cooler. I'm fine with this to an extent, but it felt disingenuous to call it really open to change. - I felt that despite the amount of effort I was clearly putting in and transparency I gave, that effort wasnt valued by the company. I declined a company wide severance offer because I wanted to keep improving and continue working here even though financially it wouldve made way more sense to take the offer. This was ultimately not enough to be given any more time to improve. This is also despite being transparent about the specific things that were difficult to me, including some health issues I was actively taking steps to resolve. To their credit, i was given a smaller severance package so I wasn't completely taken advantage of by passing on the first offer.
