Disclaimer: This post won't mention any companies or people by name.
This time I wanted to share my experience working in a stressed-out company vs. a more innovative and calmer one.
I've worked across different companies and domains - roughly half were big corporations and the other half were small teams of around 20–30 people.
Recently I was back on the job market again and had a few offers. One of them was in a domain that I find controversial, but I said to myself: "Well, software in this area probably has some interesting challenges, I'll try it.”
The people in the interview told me the usual things: the project is super interesting, innovative, amazing team, “we're like a family”… you know the drill. Everyone says that, and most of the time it's nonsense.
I accepted the offer even though it was at the bottom of my salary range. It did come with many benefits - except the laptop, which was terrible. (It was the cheapest thing you could buy.)
The position was fully remote, so I never even met half my team in person, but honestly, they were nice.
Now here's the reality:
Every day started with a 30–45 minute daily meeting with 20–25 people. Most of them you didn't know, and half the time you had no idea what they were talking about. Everyone seemed so stressed and exhausted that they barely even talked. The atmosphere was just… heavy.
I told myself: “Okay, whatever. I'm a professional, I'll focus on the project.”
But then I looked at the codebase. The oldest commit I saw was from 2015.
As a JavaScript developer, old code can be a nightmare - especially old, bad, unmaintainable code. For the React devs reading this: yes, they were still using class components. And the business owners didn't want to invest in improvements at all - just new features, constantly.
The way they pushed tasks was also terrible.
It was always something like: “Come on man, go go go. If you don't finish this fast we'll lose money and it'll be your fault!”
No wonder the team was stressed.
I wasn't happy with the product/business side at all, and they weren't thrilled with my performance either, because they expected me to magically fix a codebase that was basically unfixable without a rewrite. Eventually they decided to lay me off, which honestly was the best thing that could have happened.
After that I went back to the job market and found a smaller, more flexible company. The people there weren't stressed, they were enthusiastic, and something very important - everyone was a senior. No juniors to babysit. (In the previous company they expected me to teach juniors… but teach them what? The bad patterns in that horrible codebase?)
The new project was 3–4 years old, but dependabot opened PRs every week with updates. We adopted new tools and libraries (like the React compiler). Things moved forward.
Even better: the company was growing and getting more clients, which was good for everyone.
I remembered the “all hands” meeting from the previous company where they announced they were 20–30% down, so they wouldn't give bonuses. And I thought… if you made 3–4 million less profit, but still made 10–15 million overall, why not give your people bonuses? I wasn't eligible anyway because I hadn't been there long enough, but still - this kind of thinking kills morale. No wonder people there weren't happy.
In conclusion:
Most companies are very different from the image they try to present. If you join a company and the red flags start showing up right away, don't hesitate to leave and start looking again. Life is too short to work with bad people or waste your time stuck in a place where you can't grow.