1. (a) The work environment was mired in internal politics, conflict resolution was absent, and distrust between coworkers seemed to be fanned. There was insincerety in communication and action from the leadership, all perhaps in an attempt to maintain a management-approved narrative of an underwhelming state of affairs.
(b) There was a critical lack of competence at managing (and acquiring) talent. The culture fostered disingenuity and sophistry over expertise and honest assessment. Routine manifestation of the Dunning Kruger effect had free reign and was a key driver of the organization. Favoritism was rampant. Legitimate performance evaluation was absent.
2. (a) Re-organizations were frequent and org structures followed agendas that seemed independent of product functionality and skill sets more often than not. Per Conway's law, the clutter in the product was reflective of such organization and flux.
(b) Product teams were expected to ideate features flying blind, in isolation from customer feedback, market research and user experience. There was also a policy of design by committee and decisions were made by consensus, perhaps because of a lack of technical competence of the upper management coupled with a strong compulsion to micromanage every function. There was no honoring of ownership or of actual delegation.
(c) Few ideas were realized as complete working implementations (even v1s) - the resources invested wouldn't be nearly sufficient, improvements and iterations would not be prioritized, and experts wouldn't be allowed to do their job without micromanagement. The productive would be vilified for not meeting unnecessarily aggressive (if not simply uninformed) expectations, prematurely, over partially developed solutions.
(d) Product and company objectives were vague and seemed intentional (as were perf evals and feedback).
(e) The primary objectives for PMs seemed to be to fill backlogs and for engineers to clear them, there was really no seriousness in delivering anything of value.
3. The upper management consistently engaged in misrepresentation and character assassination instead of genuinely admitting to lapses and addressing feedback from departing (and present) employees, writing off even key veteran contributors as "cultural misfits" (!!!).
4. There was no interest in investing in employees and their growth, even in manners that would benefit the company. This was in keeping with the lack of respect for employees (as with the disrespect towards customers and their mockery).
