Most toxic place I have ever worked. First off, their main metric for productivity on my team was "butts in seats". So no matter how much work you got done, you were expected to be in your seat from 9 am sharp, until 6:30pm, with an hour lunch that better not go a minute outside of 12-1. My manager once told me this was because "if my boss walks through and sees that nobody is here, they'll think no work is getting done." Other teams at THD measure productivity by Lines of Code, widely regarded as the stupidest possible productivity metric for software development. As expected, this results in really bad, intentionally drawn-out code. Management also uses gaslighting and fear to keep employees in check. At the time I got hired by THD, they were rebranding their corporate imagine and saying they were now a "silicon valley tech company". This was because they had garnered a reputation around Atlanta for being a developer sweat shop and treating their corporate employees terribly. The rebranding was a lie. They were still the same company. A couple months into my tenure at THD, they laid off ALL of their contractors (hundreds, most of whom were recently hired and many of whom were on visas and had to leave the country because of the sudden layoffs), because they didn't meet their earnings goals, EVEN THOUGH they plainly said this was due to inclement weather that year, and they had made more money that year than they ever had previously. They did it with a clear message of "work hard or you might be next". The team that I was on was half local and half in another city. The team in the other city seemed to think that if they didn't "beat us" then they might get cut (a mentality that was, no doubt, handed down by the awful, toxic management at THD, that you will find all throughout the company at the corporate level). This created an environment of ANTI-collaboration. Teammates would actually withhold information privately, and then share it demeaning-ly in meetings, holding up development for the sake of looking like the better employee. We even had meetings that exploded into name-calling between the two teams. Everyone I know who still works for this company is miserable and trying to get out. I got out as fast as I could. I've worked at a handful of places. Some decent, some great. But THD is the only place I've worked that I would call TOXIC, and I still can't believe how terrible and childish the culture was. I would not recommend working here to my worst enemy.
