5 ms·

I very nearly worked there in their engineering department, but once I got through the initial HR interview into the technical stuff, there were so many red fla

I very nearly worked there in their engineering department, but once I got through the initial HR interview into the technical stuff, there were so many red flags that I got outta there as soon as I could. A few higher level people who were all let go with me ended up going there, and having met up with them a few times, I've heard some absolute horror stories about everything ranging from dev workload, to security, to extremely unqualified devs being hired to fill seats. I'm not surprised by this in the least, and frankly, I'm surprised it's not worse.

throwawayfoc 7y ago
This is endemic to the FoC. When your entire team is recent boot camp grads, this is the end result. The engineering culture is a joke. (Source: former employee.)
- maxdata 7y ago
  I'm a current employee in the FoC (just not StockX), and with more than a decade in software development, I am easily the least experienced on our team by several years.
- bagels 7y ago
  What is "FoC"?
  - islanderfun 7y ago
    I think its "family of companies" which StockX is a part of. https://www.quickenloans.com/about/partner-company https://www.quickenloans.com/about/partner-company "
    - elkos 7y ago
      They are so many of them!
gist 7y ago
> there were so many red flags that I got outta there as soon as I could Instead of joining the bashing party and lieu of making a broad statement why don't you detail what some of those red flags were?
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
PopeDotNinja 7y ago
I had a similar experience, but I made the mistake of taking the job. I spent several months in denial about how smart people who act so... not smart. At one point, I asked the CTO for guidance on how to work with the team architect whose feelings I kept hurting. For example, I wrote a constructor for a class, and the architect asked me what "def initialize" was for, and got upset when I asked if they knew how OOP in the language worked. Another time they asked me for help on a weekend to figure a null pointer error on a machine that wasn't running the software they were trying to debug, and got upset when I pointed that out. I brought up both examples to the CTO. The CTO pointed out that the Architect had 10 more years of experience than I did, and while I might be right, I probably wasn't. Then the CTO said (direct quote) "you have delusions of grandeur about your technical abilities" to my face. I started looking for a new job immediately after that conversation. After I left, I heard the project got canceled, the architect got promoted, and they were hiring devs straight out of bootcamps because they couldn't attract anyone with experience.
- alephnan 7y ago
  Sounds like you dodged a bullet. Did you end up working at another Fashion-Tech company? I'm curious how much of this is characteristic of Fashion-Tech industry in general.
  - PopeDotNinja 7y ago
    I dodged a bullet indeed. Out of the dozen other devs there, there was exactly one person I'd care to work with again. They got pushed out a month or two later, and post-shenanigans felt infinitely better. My advice is to do what you gotta do to pay the bills, but don't delude yourself into thinking that a crazy sauce employer will change its ways because you try extra hard to change them when they resist your attempts to do so.
- pgm8705 7y ago
  I used to work closely with Quicken Loans and other FoCs and can attest that this behavior is commonplace. There is this strange culture within the Family of Companies where non-tech leaders think that tenured Quicken engineers and tech people are these sort of super-geniuses. Many years back I was a part of a company in the Quicken led start-up space. We were often "encouraged" to meet with Quicken or FatHead senior engineers for advice. One time I reluctantly agreed and met with "the best programmer in Michigan" who's first piece of advice was: "Delete your app and start over. Ruby on Rails is trash. Real programmers use C#. With C# you can create libraries that you can reuse across all your apps."

throwawayfoc 7y ago

This is endemic to the FoC. When your entire team is recent boot camp grads, this is the end result. The engineering culture is a joke. (Source: former employee.)

maxdata 7y ago
I'm a current employee in the FoC (just not StockX), and with more than a decade in software development, I am easily the least experienced on our team by several years.
bagels 7y ago
What is "FoC"?
- islanderfun 7y ago
  I think its "family of companies" which StockX is a part of. https://www.quickenloans.com/about/partner-company https://www.quickenloans.com/about/partner-company "
  - elkos 7y ago
    They are so many of them!

gist 7y ago

> there were so many red flags that I got outta there as soon as I could Instead of joining the bashing party and lieu of making a broad statement why don't you detail what some of those red flags were?

deleted 7y ago
[deleted]

PopeDotNinja 7y ago

I had a similar experience, but I made the mistake of taking the job. I spent several months in denial about how smart people who act so... not smart. At one point, I asked the CTO for guidance on how to work with the team architect whose feelings I kept hurting. For example, I wrote a constructor for a class, and the architect asked me what "def initialize" was for, and got upset when I asked if they knew how OOP in the language worked. Another time they asked me for help on a weekend to figure a null pointer error on a machine that wasn't running the software they were trying to debug, and got upset when I pointed that out. I brought up both examples to the CTO. The CTO pointed out that the Architect had 10 more years of experience than I did, and while I might be right, I probably wasn't. Then the CTO said (direct quote) "you have delusions of grandeur about your technical abilities" to my face. I started looking for a new job immediately after that conversation. After I left, I heard the project got canceled, the architect got promoted, and they were hiring devs straight out of bootcamps because they couldn't attract anyone with experience.

alephnan 7y ago
Sounds like you dodged a bullet. Did you end up working at another Fashion-Tech company? I'm curious how much of this is characteristic of Fashion-Tech industry in general.
- PopeDotNinja 7y ago
  I dodged a bullet indeed. Out of the dozen other devs there, there was exactly one person I'd care to work with again. They got pushed out a month or two later, and post-shenanigans felt infinitely better. My advice is to do what you gotta do to pay the bills, but don't delude yourself into thinking that a crazy sauce employer will change its ways because you try extra hard to change them when they resist your attempts to do so.
pgm8705 7y ago
I used to work closely with Quicken Loans and other FoCs and can attest that this behavior is commonplace. There is this strange culture within the Family of Companies where non-tech leaders think that tenured Quicken engineers and tech people are these sort of super-geniuses. Many years back I was a part of a company in the Quicken led start-up space. We were often "encouraged" to meet with Quicken or FatHead senior engineers for advice. One time I reluctantly agreed and met with "the best programmer in Michigan" who's first piece of advice was: "Delete your app and start over. Ruby on Rails is trash. Real programmers use C#. With C# you can create libraries that you can reuse across all your apps."