Disclaimer: I'm a software engineer and in my 15+ year professional career I've already switched employer 8 times. Job hopping is quite common for software engineers, as it's good to get involved with other technology stacks and work flows, and of course the best way to get a good bump in salary. Just very recently, little over 2 months ago, I started at the current gig and I already handed in my resignation letter. A new record!
This workplace being terrible was already written on the wall before I even started. The previous development team consisting of 4 developers (all interns that stuck around after graduation) quit in a matter of 3 months. Before I signed I contacted the last remaining developer privately to ask him what the deal with this place was and I wish I would've taken his warnings to heart. I got a very competitive salary and signed anyway, being fully aware that this job wasn't going to be easy and the environment would be chaotic. But I was enthusiastic, ambitious and wanted to turn things around. I was the first new senior developer and I was told I'd get to set up a new team with 6, 7 other devs.
Things spiraled downwards pretty quickly. Aside from an enormous mountain of overdue work/gigantic backlog of things that had to be finished yesterday, I was quickly met with a lot of impatience and even hostility from other departments and management. Everything felt rushed and everyone felt like their overdue project had priority over others. Little by little more quirks were introduced:
- Those other developers that I had already interviewed and were going to receive an offer? They were never called back, me and a junior dev were “enough to handle the workload”.
- I suddenly had to bring an IT phone with me and be available from 6 AM in the morning until midnight for any 'calamities' (printers not working, generic IT support stuff). Meaning I'd practically have to be available for work all day, even though I only work 32 hours/4 days on contract and I have 2 infants.
- Working from home was a no-go. It's a 30 minute drive from home and gas prices are insane here in my country.
- Travel expenses got practically reduced to 0.
- One hour long 'mandatory' breaks were introduced, meaning I'd have to be stuck at the office for 40 minutes longer and buy more daycare-hours for my kids even though I'd get nothing in return for it.
- The IT manager jumped ship, suddenly I was unofficially the new IT manager and got even more workload.
- I got dragged in one meeting with an angry, fuming client/customer after another for projects for which I had no context.
- The CEO was originally the developer of the software I worked on and had obviously never bothered staying up to date with tech anymore a long long time ago. To top that off he's a textbook narcissist and it's his way or the highway, even if his method is extremely outdated and ineffective.
- Micromanagement is an understatement. Either the IT manager (before he left) or the CEO were constantly nagging me about the status of projects, and then wondering why nothing was getting finished on time. Easily 5 hours of my 8 hour workday consisted of agile/scrummy-esque meetings and meetings with angry customers.
- Talking with co-workers was obviously a no-go. Whenever I'd have a chat with one of my co-workers the CEO (who is now sitting in the same room) would aggressively barge in to ask if we're stuck and why we aren't working.
By now, the entire IT department has once again quit. Not just me, but the 2 junior devs, the IT manager, the project engineer and a trainee. I got 2 weeks left and never before have I counted down to leaving a place as hard as this one.