- The CTO told me that the appropriate time to raise any feedback (outside of my directly assigned tickets) was 1x/month in an hourly tag-up with him. I was also informed I was not eligible for any changes to my role or responsibilities for at least six months (but this didn't count to them as a "probationary period").
- It was mandatory to record every hour of my 40 hour work week against a ticket in a time-sheet. (I was told this was standard across all engineering, and not a PIP.) That was to be my status report to the CTO, and it is how the company tracked engineering effort. I didn't know this was a requirement until I was already a month in. I asked what happens if I have an hour-long conversation with a coworker, and was told that I was supposed to log that to a ticket.
- The Baltimore office is a small group of people. There were two departures from that group in my time there, and I didn't hear about them officially. There was no goodbye happy hour, no email, nothing. I found out about both by coincidence during happy hours, well after fact.
- I suggested an engineering-wide discussion where we could talk about process and culture, about what being at a Series A startup meant to us, and what our vision for a department was. I proposed this in a 1:1 with the CEO, their response was that this would be perceived as "mutiny" and advised against doing that.
Suffice it to say, this experience was not what I expected in coming on as a senior-level engineering hire at a Series A startup.
