The founder CEO (with a cult of personality) really believes that it is the way to "top tech talent." He comes from a management consulting background and tries to manage the software organization like they're consultants. Leads to a very bottom heavy organization, with a lot of juniors, many of whom get PIPed right as they're starting to become useful. It leads to high turnover with a lot of backstabbing, and very short term thinking because everybody is always focused on the next performance management cycle.

It was really a bizarre place to work, because work-life balance was amazing, the benefits and vacation were great, but twice a year there was this insane hunger games.

They really chilled out the performance management process from 2020 or so through 2023, so people who worked there then didn't always notice.