Pros
Depite the significant challenges posed by "leadership", the most enduring positive aspect of this company remains the talented and dedicated staff. The teams ere are composed of exceptional professionals who are genuinely committed to their work. They are highly skilled, and crucially, they try to foster a culture of mutual support; colleagues are consistently willing to collaborate, offer assistance, and share knowledge to ensure project success, often in spite of operational hurdles. The team managers also are trying to help you make it a good place to work, even if they are powerless with regard to the C-level.
Cons
Leadership and Culture The core issue stems from the CTO’s challenging management style, characterized by a highly visible mentality of micromanagement and a lack of foundational interpersonal skills necessary for leading technical teams. This style is not one of collaborative guidance but of excessive scrutiny and distrust. A palpable culture of blame has been established, where the focus is consistently placed on identifying individuals to fault rather than diagnosing and solving systemic problems. This accountability is applied selectively; favoritism dictates who is shielded from criticism. Furthermore, the CTO publicly undermined the long-standing, experienced engineering staff by making comments regarding the need to hire "real seniors." Most distressingly, there is a troubling pattern of arbitrary and sudden terminations. Several employees were let go even after recently receiving excellent performance reviews from their direct managers, indicating a complete disconnect between departmental and C-level evaluation. In some cases, managers were reportedly informed of these firings only when they saw the former employee's account deactivated on Slack. Compensation and Operational Stability The compensation policy is a significant area of concern. Not only are the salaries often below market rate, but the internal structure lacks transparency and fairness, actively punishing long-term commitment. New hires often receive starting salaries significantly higher than experienced existing staff, regardless of the veteran employees' tenure, expertise, or even management roles. Furthermore, management has demonstrated poor communication regarding compensation changes. The shift from an hourly to a fixed monthly salary structure was implemented abruptly, announced with minimal lead time (in the final week of one month for implementation the following week), creating financial uncertainty and eroding trust. Compounding this, the fixed salary structure is now used by the CTO to demand unpaid extra hours, no matter if it's a weekend or holiday, leveraging the transition to eliminate compensation for overtime work. Operationally, the focus is on starting new projects rather than finishing existing ones. Engineers are frequently moved between “high-priority” initiatives, preventing them from seeing work through to completion, yet they are simultaneously blamed for the resulting backlog of unfinished work. This extends to the deployment process: engineers are held responsible for tickets stuck in deployment readiness for months—requiring continuous maintenance and conflict resolution—when the deployment bottleneck lies entirely outside their control. Teams are unfairly held accountable for cross-functional dependencies; even after repeatedly warning managers for months that a failure is imminent due to an external team’s inaction, the originating team is blamed when the expected failure occurs. Current Environment and Outlook This environment has rapidly deteriorated what was once a highly enjoyable and productive workplace. The resulting toxic culture, coupled with micromanagement and the fear of arbitrary termination, has led to a major talent exodus. At the time of my departure, multiple high-performing individuals were actively seeking new roles, and others have already resigned without securing alternate employment, preferring unemployment over continuing in the current climate. Note I mentioned the CTO quite a bit, but that's because he's closer to the IT team. However, all the points I mentioned apply to the entire C-level, specially the lack of interpersonal skills.