Toxic environment with poor leadership and no trust - Senior Software Engineer Diligent Employee Review

1.0
Jun 10, 2026
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

Cannot think of any. The culture has degraded.

Cons

1. No culture, No process, No trust 2. Global leadership lacks to build a culture of respect and collaboration across different locations. 3. No transparency, competition between different sites to build the same solution which wastes time and resources and credibility. 4. No trust and projects are failing due to this. 5. No job safety. Good performers and asked to leave in the name of redundancy. No respect for employees who build business outcomes. 6. No culture of recognition and appreciation. 7. Escalations are everyday's routine. 8. Time spent to solve noise between teams than focusing on actual work. 9. Some sites are growing due to leadership trust and supoort from stakeholders and some sites are getting maintenance work due to no stakeholder support though there is talent and skill. 10. Biased and no timezone respect. Expecting employees to work round the clock and keep sending updates. 11. Commercial and product teams have no collaboration with engineering leadership. They are always in escalation mode setting unrealistic timelines without right priority. 12. Priorities keep changing every week based on who asks what from leadership or Commercial teams. Engineering team suffers ultimately. 13. Features or projects built for 6 to 7 months are thrown away due to bad prioritization and leadership following the lead of Commercial teams without listening to Engineering teams. 14. Delayed decisions are common where projects suffer and engineers are blamed for not executing. Projects which are completed by working on multiple weekends are stalled due to incorrect requirements and scope. Leadership looks at the end result, but not the journey or root cause of the result. They dont have time and listens to the narrative of teams sitting in US only. 15. Key to survive is to have good relation with people in US and some influential folks from non-eng teams who have opinion on Eng strategy or code written. We need to put effort to manage them and things get done. Leadership suddenly starts appreciating the team. 16. Great vision on ppts and failure in execution. Employees are insulted every time in large meetings for reasons as simple as not filling excel data in the format they want to see. No one is able to control such unacceptable behaviour. Engineering has become support system for product team than partner. Though mentioned to leadership, they look at business outcomes not the developer experience or the toxic environment created to get things done 17. No cross site collaboration. There is power game played to get more products or projects in each site where employees struggle and suffer.

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2.0
Mar 11, 2026
Anonymous employee
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

The product is market-leading, and the space is genuinely interesting. There's no shortage of smart, capable people at Diligent. A lot of talented managers exist within the org who could do more if given the room.

Cons

Direction changes constantly — sometimes it feels quarter over quarter. The result is widespread burnout and an inability to execute. Senior leaders rarely push back on the CEO, which means teams absorb every strategic shift without warning or context. HR leadership prioritizes serving the executive team over the broader employee population. The HR team is stretched thin and operates more like a compliance function than a culture or development partner. (Turnover within HR leadership has been notable.) Pay is below market. The equity program is opaque, poorly managed, and functions more as a retention mechanism than a genuine benefit (with no clear path to liquidity). There's a meaningful gap between what the company says it stands for—especially around employee experience—and what it actually delivers internally.

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Diligent Response
2mo
Thank you for taking the time to share such thoughtful feedback about your experience. We truly appreciate you recognizing the strengths of our product and the talent across our team, and we’re glad to hear the space feels interesting and compelling. We also recognize that as a company focused on governance, risk and compliance, that it’s critical to hold ourselves to the same high standards internally. Through our monthly pulse surveys, we listen to our team, learn and actively work to strengthen any areas of feedback from alignment to transparency, or accountability across our leadership teams. In fact, one of our OKRs is focused solely on ensuring we have an empowered and accountable team, which we rally around as an organization. We appreciate other sources of feedback like yours, as it is an important part of that effort. Our People team is committed to supporting an elevated employee experience and continuously improving how we listen, respond, and evolve. While we won’t always get everything right on the first try, we are highly focused on continuing to iterate and making meaningful progress to ensure our actions reflect our values. We encourage continued feedback and appreciate you sharing your perspective. If you’d like to provide any additional context, please feel free to reach out at: HRConfidential@diligent.com
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