Pros

- Opportunity to learn about heavy industries - Friendly people (except for the management when challenged) - Modern tools and technologies

Cons

- Harvard grads and brogrammers calling the shots where experience is critical - Avoidance of open discussion on serious issues - 40+ employees in a startup with no product-market fit The company tried to terminate my employment and failed. Friday morning a month ago I joined a meeting listed as a 1:1 with a manager, expecting to talk about a team issue I had been raising for weeks. Instead, the CTO and the COO were there along with the manager who said we are parting ways effective immediately, added it was nice knowing you and signed off. The COO said he was there only as an HR and that the company is offering 4 weeks severance. I confirmed to the CTO that my personal email they have on file is correct and said I am not interested in their offer. When I started telling him what had been going on, he said I am taking notes. After a couple of minutes of that, the COO said let's talk on Monday. Our contract states that it may be terminated by either side upon delivery of written notice. By Sunday evening I had not received one, so I emailed the CTO my resignation notice, effective immediately. In the notice I listed my reasons: - I wrote that I had been warning them for two years about our system architecture that makes facilities needlessly interdependent and overdependent on the cloud, which was responsible for many incidents, such as multiple instances where one facility caused the system in unrelated other facilities to stop working; or, that on-prem users often have trouble logging in, which they must do through the cloud; or, that power blips caused multiple control systems to be wiped out because we used an experimental and now unsupported OS in mission critical systems. - I said my attempts to bring up the issue were ignored or actively suppressed: I mentioned how when a coworker and I requested a company tech talk slot to discuss the architecture issues, the management blocked it, saying "I fear if not framed correctly it will seed the perception that we're going in the wrong direction as a company". - I wrote that there is a pattern of ignoring problems, such as when during the practice pitch for investors the CTO reached the slide about the users and just said "our users love us" and moved on, even though our net promoter score was abysmal (a recent incident video shows an irate user saying “see I’m switching to Atlas Platform, or Dashboard, whatever the hell you want to call it”). Or that, following a tech talk about a method for energy saving they said was key for finding the product market fit, when I asked about the research that shows temperature fluctuations of +-5C and even +-2C degrade frozen food quality and asked what the range would be in our method, I received no response and had seen no follow-up. - I reminded them of the damage caused by a new hire in the team leadership who kept bullying people for months despite my repeatedly raising the issue with the management. Seeing no improvement, after the person attacked me and another engineer, I confronted him in public; after he was forced to apologize in a standup, multiple people also complained about him and he was fired the next day. Then, in my performance review two weeks later, the management gave me "anonymous" negative feedback that I "should have handled [the bully] through the management", a comment that could have come only from the management. - I wrote that now a similar situation arose with another person in the team leadership with repeated attempts at strongarming and manipulation that the management ignored or justified, and that I wasn’t the only target, so I had to work around the person while waiting for them to resolve it. - I finished recounting how one of the employees who left the company soon after I started had asked to meet with me a few months later, to tell me that he left because he was uncomfortable with how the software people approached system safety. Their response Monday and in the days that followed seemed one of confusion and panic, sending me multiple notices on their own and asking me to disregard previous ones, I assume to escape filing my notice as a legal document that investors might see. I did not ask anything of the company, and by the terms of the contract their acceptance of my resignation is not required. For the record, two months earlier, on my second annual review, I received great reviews from coworkers and 11% raise. (On the first annual review where I received the "should have gone through the management" feedback I received equally good reviews and 3% raise.) If everyone is respectful and I disagree with the company direction, I wish them good luck and leave. But if someone in a position of power disrespects me repeatedly and the management allows it, I don’t leave; I have done nothing wrong. Since they decided to just get rid of me and couldn’t even do that – who goes to terminate someone unprepared? – I believe it fair to make my experience public.