Mentally draining - Senior Software Engineer Branch Employee Review

2.0
Mar 24, 2021
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

Good product, good co-workers, monthly day off during the current WFH environment

Cons

Work at Branch, especially in engineering, is very draining mentally. Though the management says they care about work life balance and employees mental health, it is only for presentations and not put to use in day to day work. I am all for working hard, especially in a startup environment, but it is very disappointing and de-motivating when only people who work long and odd hours are appreciated (including at the company all hands). This obviously puts people with family commitments at a disadvantage. Heroics are appreciated more than sustainable work. Peers in my team are under constant stress and pressure due to micromanagement and fear of being put on a PIP, even though I know for a fact that they are strong engineers. The engineering teams all seem to be understaffed, from development, to QA, to data & infrastructure and more.

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Branch Response
5y
We are very sorry that you feel this way and I strongly encourage you to reach out to me directly for an open discussion so I can help you find an appropriate work/life balance. I can assure you that we do value feedback and strive to reach a good work / life balance for each employee, which we recognize may be different for each individual. We regularly do anonymous engagement surveys which include a number of questions on work/life blend, and where we see feedback from the team of areas we need to improve, we take action. Examples of such actions are guidelines and expectations on employee availability on Slack and Email for off hours, and that emergency escalations should be done via PagerDuty instead. There is also a Employee Resource Group for mental health and I would recommend you look into participating in this, as it's another avenue where team feedback will influence actions that make our work environment better. We are in a fast pace and outcome driven environment and while we have the framework in place to balance time the way to enact that balance is ultimately yours to own. Once again, please reach out to me directly so we can work together on your situation so that we can get you to an appropriate Work/Life blend.

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CEO approval
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Pros

Smart coworkers, great tech to use

Cons

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3.0
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CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

- Great team - Smart coworkers - Decent WLB

Cons

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