While engineering practice was good, it lacks product direction and misaligned valueThe good thingsThe engineering culture and ways of working allows engineers to spend time to learn. Practice and CoP were driven by engineers, albeit engagement with wider group of people could be improved.
The challengesNot enough transparency from C-level management and hence, the messaging doesn't really propagate well to wider people. While townhalls were there, but, leadership team doesn't promote much 2-way communication on where the company is leading - causing misalignment of expectations.
Potentially related, some area of product management was very lacking in direction too. Company acquired LMIS product to enrich existing portfolio. Vision was not clear and hence, product direction was chaotic. While engineering took the work and execution, It leads to poor outcome as expectation were misaligned (example: in term of engineering decision -vs- product vision). Along with heavy competition in the space, they lose and totally pull out from LMIS marketplace.
My impression on product management as Atlassian plugin vendor was good, albeit doesn't innovate much. It seems to suffer similar consequence where they started to sell their Atlassian plugin business to a competitor.
Lastly, the company is not quite sensitive with recent unfortunate events happening in the world. For a company that pretend to want to grow together, I wish they grow with the right values and being a good human being living in this world.
