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What Are the Signs of Toxic Software Companies?

What signs of a toxic dev company have you noticed, and how did you respond?


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Top comments (7)

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paolinsky profile image
Paolo Torregrosa

I worked in a company where the QA team was not allowed to write a single line of code, you can Imagine how manual testing impacted delivery times and the amount of bug fixing. At the moment I was the iOS tech lead of the company, so we tried to implement some unit tests on an application... But the CEO said "If you test your own code you will always choose the happy path so it is worthless", at the end I left the company and a few months later it closed because most of the clients were not happy with it.

Luckily that happened a long time ago, and after that job I started a position as a normal software developer in an amazing startup, and I don't have plans to leave my job in the future.

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daveparr profile image
Dave Parr

When the (non-technical) leaders of a company dictate product features by locking themselves away in a room for months, plan a huge 'launch party' for a new product, then announce a date when it will be released to all the prosective clients, then talk to the software team AFTER THIS ENTIER SHENANIGAN.

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bogomil profile image
Bogomil Shopov - ะ‘ะพะณะพ

Are you talking about Agile :)

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daveparr profile image
Dave Parr

Obviously no one in that conversation came away pleased.

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raviklog profile image
raviklog

Company culture is important to be more accommodative in terms of voicing opinions, junior & senior bonding, respect & free flow of knowledge sharing, and addressing concerns of every employee. If these are not met it will be quite tough to be creative and do qualitative work and everyone feel a different percentage of toxicity.

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olgabraginskaya profile image
Olga Braginskaya

When the HR person during the screening interview tells you about the opportunity to work at a successful, affluent, unicorn startup, and 5m later in response to your salary expectations, which are average for the market, they purse their lips and say, 'Well, thatโ€™s too much.'"

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dpark profile image
Dan

I worked at a proverbial big tech company where decisions were made unilaterally without explanation, trickling down to a lot of pain for IC's. Making strong decisions for a broader org is unavoidable but doing so in an opaque uncommunicative way seems to break down trust and moral.