The dysfunction trickles straight down from the top. After decades of leading one company, the CEO and his inner circle overestimate themselves, running the place like a classic dictatorship. Mid-to-senior management don't get to actually use the skills they were hired for; instead, they are overpaid messengers forced to micromanage their reports based on the executives' ever-changing whims. A few obvious or overdue wins have reinforced their hubris. There is no actual strategy other than "do stuff and hope it makes money".
Psychological safety is on the floor. We are suffocated by false positivity and a "recognition" culture, but the the environment is deeply guarded. The smart people don't ruffle any feathers, play the popularity game, and avoid taking the fall for failures. Many recent departures happened under strange, rumoured circumstances, with roles staying empty and everyone on edge. The culture is split into two groups: the cheerleaders who hype up everything that leadership says (who knows if its genuine or just an act any more), and the people who haven't drunk the kool-aid but stay quiet.
Burnout is so common that it seems like a feature, not a bug. We are constantly told to do more with less as leadership herald AI as a magical cure-all for our resource issues. Extended sick leaves are on the rise (obviously due to stress) but because everyone is terrified of layoffs, nobody wants to admit how much they're hurting. The "recognition" we get sometimes feels empty or even insulting as leadership ignore our actual working conditions. Not to mention the unfairness in how recognition is given. The only reason we still have any top performers might be that they're too exhausted to succeed in job interviews.
Because of all this, the platform itself disappoints. We have released many half-baked, disappointing features that don't meet the marketing hype, and we only bother to fix them if clients kick and scream over it. The executives churn out too many ideas, refuse to prioritize, and treat the word "trade-off" as a dirty word. Middle managers are forced to drop everything and do the impossible for the hot topic of the month and just pray that the inevitable fire doesn't smoke them out.
There are few rewards for suffering through this. Career development is not one of them. There is no budget or clear path for training, conferences, or certifications. The competency frameworks are either non-existing or so outdated that we're told not to use them, while HX always says they're "working on it". When frameworks do exist, they're more of a weapon to deny promotions than to help people advance. The promotion process is a complete black box, but they're incredibly rare anyway. At the manager level, external candidates are almost always hired instead of promoting from within. Then again, that might be for the best, since managers get such little training and perform so inconsistently.
