Prós
I was able to accomplish a lot during my time there, and cross-functioning teams that I worked with were always appreciative of my efforts and contributions.
Contras
Colleagues were generally unwilling to help onboard or explain technical details, and there was little interest in taking ownership of the project beyond dictating their preferred approaches. Support for learning or adopting technology was severely lacking, and team contributions to actual development work were non-existent (commit log during this time period can prove this). Discussions often drifted into lengthy debates on theoretical or unrelated technical topics rather than focusing on practical solutions. Overall, it felt like there was more emphasis on control than on genuine teamwork or shared progress.
There also seemed to be an ongoing struggle among team members to assert themselves as leaders, with more focus on dictating how they think software should be built and teams should function (with continual emphasis on their expertise and where I sit in the team hierarchy) rather than delivering high-quality software. Even after raising concerns, the toxic atmosphere persisted, as some seemed more interested in positioning themselves as leaders to compensate for their lack of technical ability.
