Nulia Reviews

The product management here was the erratic and disorganized I've ever seen at a software development company, especially for such a relatively small company. We had a dedicated scrummaster who was powerless to enact simple planning tools like estimating sprint points and work capacity due to our roadmap of features constantly changing on a daily basis. Instead, our planning meetings were often centered around whether we thought our executive team might be prioritizing a feature based on their tone of voice about it at a recent meeting or how excited they seemed about it; that's how dysfunctional our planning process was. It always felt like reading tea leaves instead of actually having clear objectives. We were routinely forced to completely change priorities at the last minute, or add a bunch of last-minute changes on a whim of the executive leadership team who never seemed to understand their role in scope creep and pushed deadlines. Additionally, the new features we were being asked to develop did not seem to be benefiting our core product; instead, they only made it more complicated and confusing. Executive leadership micromanaged everything. Feature requirements were never documented very well, so as a software developer, I never had a clear sense of whether I was meeting the objectives of each assignment. When something was missed because it wasn't communicated to a developer clearly, the blame was implicitly put on the development team for not meeting these previously-unknown requirements instead of trying to deconstruct our dysfunctional planning and management processes. My direct manager checked in with me once during my first week and then never again after that, so I never knew if I was meeting his expectations of me. He was always focusing his time and energy on meeting with the executive team to clarify feature requirements and negotiate on unreasonable deadlines. I was promised a performance review after my first 90 days, but it never happened. I felt a distinct absence of support from both my manager and the rest of my development team; we all felt too siloed away from each other. Very little collaboration and no pair programming. I never received any feedback on my work, positive or negative, from anyone. There is an absence of clear leadership on the software team. Technical planning meetings were often filled with awkward silences around important questions around architecture. My suggestions based on past experience with larger software projects were usually ignored and dismissed condescendingly by other more junior engineers on the project. I was a senior-level engineer, but the junior engineer who reported to me on the project routinely ignored my guidance and requests for changes to his code in pull requests. PR reviews became a joke after a short while since I knew my feedback to him was totally irrelevant to everyone on the team. Cowboy coding is the norm here. PTO is minimal (2 weeks combined sick/vacation). I had to take over a week off due to having symptoms of COVID-19; when I came back to work, I was chastised for this by my direct manager and told to stop taking any more sick leave. Employees should definitely not be shamed for taking sick leave when they are ill, especially if they have acute symptoms of COVID-19 during a serious pandemic.

Where can I start? When I started working for Nulia, I was excited and had very high hopes. Boy was I wrong. There is no clear direction here. The executive team tries to reinvent the wheel every single week, so there is no consistency. The CEO is an absolute joke. His wife, the President of the company is the most tyrannical person I have ever encountered in my life. Walking on eggshells around her is an understatement. She is gossipy and screams at employees in front of the entire building. So incredibly unprofessional. It is obvious she gets off on making people afraid of her and “rules” like a mid evil dictator. She can’t get along with even her husband, the CEO and they like to not only yell and scream at the staff, but at each other too. Tension is so high that I can’t even stand going into the office. I’ve had to start taking anxiety medication since working here. I have to pay the bills, so I am stuck at the moment but actively looking for alternative work. Aside from the day to day verbal abuse, the President and the CEO refuse to listen to any other person’s ideas or feedback. The content team rarely ever knows what is actually going on and is forced to jump from one foot to the other, which gets nowhere. The two tyrant bosses try an idea for a couple of days and instead of giving it time to work or even time to be fully executed, they scrap it and start with something completely different. Within a couple of hours of meeting these two, it is blatantly obvious that they have no semblance of how to run a business. None at all. I am waiting for someone to sue the pants off this company for how they treat the employees. I am no HR person, but I am pretty sure it is not ok to yell and cuss at your staff, let alone in front of other staff. Every single thing has to be approved by the tyrants. Even emails that are sent externally. They have to be involved in every little thing, which makes everything run at a snail’s pace. You can’t even be trusted to compile an email. I have never in my life been so micromanaged. They treat everyone like a child. They have zero trust in any of the staff they hire and treat everyone horribly. The last townhall meeting we had, the President started the conversation talking about returning to the office. All the while, saying they really care about our concerns. That was not the truth. A handful of people had questions or concerns about returning to the office in the middle of this pandemic. This set the President, Michelle, into a tailspin. She started screaming at anyone who had a concern and anyone who didn’t completely agree with the decision to return to the office right away. Another review on here stated that it was likely because she can’t really run the company on intimidation and fear as effectively from home. That makes about the most sense of anything that I’ve heard and is completely right. Now on to the CEO, Steve. He is horrible at this. Absolutely astoundingly horrible at trying to run a company. If his tyrannical sadistic wife doesn’t get the company sued or run it into the ground, then good ole Steve will! I can assure you of that. He calls meetings every week and talks about what they talked about yesterday. There are so many meetings about meetings, that nothing gets done. Literally nothing. On Monday there is a meeting. We get the pass down, somewhat. Then there is a meeting the next day or so and now we are completely changing gears. There is zero consistency. The staff has come to the conclusion that it is because this company is falling apart and the investors are being fed lies and being led to believe this company is actually going somewhere. With Steve and Michelle begins the wheel, it will not. They are doing their beat to drive this company head on into a tree. Anyone considering working or investing here, should really just save themselves the trouble, anxiety and/or loss of their investment and go elsewhere. Fast.