Upper software management needs to course-correct ASAP or risk losing more engineers
Pros
Friendly, genuine, hardworking team. The software team is doing their best to improve their development process and put in place good practices Practical product with a genuine use case Reasonable compensation Good snacks at the office
Cons
The upper software management takes a "my way or the highway" approach to things, and there seems to be a strong resistance to listen to and trust in the engineering team. The result is a loss in morale, extreme burnout / frustration among the team, and what will ultimately become another mountain of technical debt, which completely defeats the purpose of trying to dig the team out of the already existing technical debt in the first place. Engineers have been yelled at during meetings, interactions from the software management have been extremely unprofessional, and the team has been pushed to the brink due to the extreme pressure to deliver at the expense of quality. At one point for roughly a month, half of the entire software team was benched and the other half, comprised of more senior developers, was asked to work very long hours in-person at the office, at the height of the pandemic. In addition, the established software development process was tossed out the window. It struck me as an enormous waste of talent and money to put capable engineers on the sideline and tell them to "just understand the code better" when there was and still is so much real work that needed to be done for the product. Upper software management claimed this was not related to the engineers' individual performance, but it is a struggle to understand what other reason would spur such an enormous waste of resources. It feels as if there is zero room for mistakes at Neato, as any perceived mistake or incompetence comes with the hammer of wrath being brought down upon you, either by being yelled at or insulted in standups, or through passive-aggressiveness and subterfuge. We all understand that there are deadlines for the team to meet, but none of that is any excuse to treat the team the way management has been doing. It is extremely unprofessional. All of this as the upper software management claims they care about the team's mental health and that the kind of schedule the team has been working under for so long is "unsustainable". As the working conditions at Neato worsened, these words rang increasingly hollow. Everyone on the software team seems so burned out and it would not come as a surprise if more were to leave for other opportunities, given that some prominent team members have already left. Neato needs to do some serious course-correction ASAP in order to prevent more software team attrition. There are some genuinely great and talented people at this company, and I have little doubt that they can be successful if they have the right environment to do so, but as it is right now I don't see things turning around unless there are some changes to the upper software management.
