A software engineer’s detailed Reddit post has sparked discussion about the work culture at a US-based HR Tech MNC. The employee, who joined the company around eight months ago as an SDE-2, claims he left due to “bad work culture and toxic management.”
Promises vs Reality
According to the post, the engineer was promised flat hierarchy, direct access to leadership, and structured growth. “When I checked the profiles of my manager and architect, I saw they had 18+ years and 12+ years of experience respectively. I thought I’d learn a lot under such experienced leadership and that’s one of the reasons I decided to join,” he wrote.
However, the onboarding turned out to be a wasted month, with no documentation and only scattered training resources. The employee also alleged that a strict “work from office” rule applied only to new hires, while senior staff worked from home permanently.
‘All I Care About Is the JIRA Ticket’
The situation worsened when he started receiving tasks. His lead and architect were often unapproachable, and reaching them for calls was described as “nearly impossible.” Escalating the matter did not help. “My lead would respond to my queries only once a day, and when I escalated this to my engineering manager, his only response was: ‘All I care about is the JIRA ticket moving to the desired state.’”
The employee further revealed that his first pull request review attracted 60 comments, many of them cosmetic. “With little business context, it was natural that my code wasn’t perfect. Yet, after two months of joining, my first 1-1 was scheduled only to ask me to justify why I had received so many comments and how I planned to improve,” he wrote.
Blame Culture and Arbitrary Metrics
As per the Reddit account, tasks were force-estimated without developer input, while unrealistic timelines were enforced. “My lead, being the final reviewer, became a constant bottleneck since nothing could ship without her approval,” he said.
The engineer described the culture as increasingly toxic, citing arbitrary metrics such as 1,000 lines of code per month, mandatory AI usage for productivity, and public shaming in team meetings. Leadership allegedly encouraged “blame culture” by normalizing criticism in public forums.
The Breaking Point
He added that despite working 12–14 hours a day, including weekends, his manager threatened to put him on a Performance Improvement Plan (PIP). “That was the final straw. I decided I had, had enough. I told them I wanted to resign immediately,” the post read.
The resignation, according to him, followed a heated exchange where he made it clear that “the process itself was broken and that everyone in the team was suffering because of the way the lead and leadership handled things.”