TLDR: I worked at Eneba for 1,5 years and was micromanaged and underappreciated. I was also manipulated to quit without any personal improvement plan introduced which is a sign of favoritism and the absence of data-driven approach.
I’ve been working at Eneba for 1,5 years and I left on a very sad and unprofessional note from the management, so I would like to warn any product people who are considering working there. It’s a feature request based company with lots of micromanagement by stakeholders with little regards to customer needs, thorough discovery or care for people. With 10 years of experience in IT and 8 years of experience as a product manager, this is the first time I’m willing to write a negative review.
So let’s begin.
My summer 360 peer reviews were very positive and my peers were praising me for leading and inspiring them, highlighting my contribution to achieving team goals. I got very surprised by my manager’s review as it was completely the opposite. It took my manager 3 or 4 weeks of rescheduling to meet for an unpacking, which is around one month without actually discussing the situation, which put a lot of pressure on me. I was in a worn out state as I was very alert about managers and peer review mismatch. When I brought up my surprise about 360 feedback to the manager and asked why he didn’t ever mention anything to me during our weekly one-on ones he said “I was telling you but not directly”. This was the first red flag to look for another job, however I figured this is my chance to improve and act upon the feedback I received, as I am the person who is adaptable and ready to change. We started unpacking so it got better, but my mental health was still deteriorating.
So after some time I started to feel burnout. I must admit the past year wasn’t easy on me, but I always put my work first. At first I was afraid to put my mental health in the spotlight, but I value transparency in work relationship, so I discussed it with my managers, as I was trying to manage it like an adult. To my delight I was offered a burnout leave which to me indicated that the company wanted to keep me and wanted me to come back healthy. I started my treatment and came back fully recharged only to find my manager not being convinced that I got better. It was really hard to lead a substantial conversation as we were talking about the future and none of the KPIs were outlined, I only heard assumptions. Workwise no metrics were introduced that needed improvement, as everything was going on as usual.
My manager kept pressuring me saying “we are hustlers here, we push ourselves to our limits, and we are going to pressure you even more, and you won’t manage that”. I am a fan of “work smart not hard” approach, so you can decide for yourselves. Later on we had 3 more calls throughout next 3 weeks where I was manipulated into quitting without any formal attributes such as Performance Improvement Plan. I’ve heard things like “If you sign a mutual agreement, our reputations will stay intact”. Or “Lithuania is a small country”. I am not native Lithuanian, so it took me some time to consult regarding the labour code and possible outcomes for myself, but I managed to find out that this is not a normal process for firing a person. As no personal improvement plan was introduced, Eneba didn’t have the formal right to fire me. I am happy I had the strength to actually stand up for myself. However it makes me sad that I had to.
When I was leaving I was presented with the main reason – my values are being misaligned with the company values, amongst them being -
My need for re-assurance and feedback
My need for timely communication from stakeholders
My need for transparency within team scopes as product teams are barely talking to each other
My tech skills were not the level needed for the position, which started to include Tech Product management a lot
There’s only one part of this feedback I agree with - My tech knowledge was lower for a person in my position, however, normally it is solved by having an engineer team lead or an engineering manager to support product part of the team, who are working on discovery mainly. I never applied for tech PM role, as I am aware of my strengths that lie in communication, discovery and leading agile teams.
All in all Eneba is not a place for growth, and it’s not a customer/data driven company, it’s more feature-request based. No product discovery or user interviews are encouraged, speed of delivery is paramount without actually thinking about the customer. This kind of setup is fair if you are a project manager, not a product manager with opinion and ideas.
To me Eneba looks like a place where a lot of staff is being mismanaged and talented people are going to waste as it’s a top down management approach without much consideration of these talents and aspirations. What struck me is 4 teams reorgs in this short timespan and the reassurance of my manager that those will keep happening. Also, one of problems is legacy and low team motivation regarding it, as any quick tasks turn into timewasters due to the fact that a lot of code needs to be refactored.
I would like to mention that I worked with incredible peers and it saddens me that their talents are not being utilised and instead are put in the box. I really hope Eneba will learn how to make people shine and encourage them more, as the company I see now is very far from that.
