A company with great potential, but severely held back by poor leadership and business decisions
Pros
- I had the opportunity to work with truly amazing and talented people throughout my time there - During my early years, the work environment was fantastic and I had great team - When teams are stable and the work is focused, the day-to-day operations can be very engaging and fulfilling. I had a lot of consideration for the company at certain circumstances - The pay and benefits package is excellent
Cons
- The company seemed to change its strategic direction every six months. This resulted in constant shifts in priorities, abruptly canceled projects, and endless team reshuffling - The hyper-growth phase after the company became a unicorn was completely mismanaged - We went through multiple rounds of layoffs despite explicit promises from the ex-CEO that they wouldn't happen - Promised promotions for high performance were frequently discarded due to sudden reorgs. It is incredibly demotivating to be sidelined into irrelevant projects while watching peers move up, despite putting in the same (or more) effort - Some higher-ranking engineers displayed disrespectful and arrogant behavior, treating experienced peers like juniors. Technical seniority seemed to give some people a free pass to be disrespectful and toxic behavior - While I am definitely not against hiring foreign professionals (Studios in the box), the company heavily prioritized them and missed a massive opportunity to play a foundational role in developing the national scene. Now they are struggling to bring a new hit - The shift to mandatory in-office work across all departments ended up discarding excellent talent living outside the São Paulo metropolitan area. The company lost great opportunities due to false beliefs that physical presence automatically equals higher productivity and better team culture. To make matters worse, the office is located in one of the most expensive regions of SP, adding an unnecessary financial burden on employees - It is disheartening to work for a company that has had serious, known harassment allegations where the accused remained employed, even with LGBTQIA+ people. Furthermore, seeing the ex-CEO purchase a multi-million dollar mansion in the US not long after mass layoffs felt like a massive insult to all the hardworking employees who lost their jobs - During a devastating sensitive and traumatic period in my life an manager showed zero empathy or basic human decency. Instead of offering support, they demanded productivity while I was struggling to cope. This person was purely corporate, devoid of any charisma or compassion. Together with another staff member, they created a true nightmare, treating me like absolute garbage. This toxic dynamic was undoubtedly one of the key reasons the company pushed me to the sidelines - The performance review only considers the last 6 months of work, completely ignoring everything the employee built up to that point. This is a serious methodological error because it disregards all the challenges and context the person faced along the way. It actively penalizes long-term contributors by erasing their historical impact. Additionally, during my time there, there were no performance reviews for managers, creating a one-sided accountability system where only individual contributors were evaluated, not leadership
