- Founders are overly involved to the point of factory-conditions-like scrutiny and micromanagement
- Founders believe their previous stints involved in some product, design, and engineering work make them equally capable as employees in those functions, and will make passive-aggressive comments about employee's work and suggestions, to the point of overriding story point estimates and saying things like they might as well do design or coding tasks themselves; they have a skewed sense of who are contributing value to the company
- Poor hiring at the middle management level and weeding those who have their own ideas to improve things has left the company with a lot of yes-men who do not have the capability to push back against founders' unreasonable demands, which in turn further reduces the ability of individual contributors to push for changes
- Chaotic HR practices around bonuses, leaves, and work arrangements; many changes from what was agreed on in the signing contract such as pushing 50% of bonuses to the following year and adjusting notice period windows, failing to pay full bonus amounts, messing up annual leave totals, enforcing certain members return to the office due to outdated beliefs around productivity while allowing others to work fully remote
- Sustainability and social good are not core values and drivers for the business beyond greenwashing and copying what competitors are doing; concerns about issues like user's privacy and attempts to focus on anything beyond the financial bottom line are dismissed
