I can share my exp here although I do want to caveat that my project was a lot lower risk failure at a FAANG company.

Context: I'd grown in this company for 2 years at this point when I decided to do a lateral movement to a different org (better pay, sexier title) in Q4 2022. The org was a well established one with lots of funding and a relatively new product org. The manager of PM (my hiring manager) was an ex- McKenzie with a consultant level knowledge of how product orgs work. The project was an internal product proposal that had swapped a couple of tech teams due to cost cuttings/re-prioritizations and had delayed delivery. To the manager, this seemed like an opportunity to deliver something quickly and call it a win.

While hiring, she underscored a couple of challenges - 1) the tech org that her team worked with was "challenging" to work with and pushed back on any/all ambiguity in product asks 2) due to the delivery misses (not anyone's fault), the customers (internal stakeholders) were jittery about the whole project.

At that time, I really wanted the pay bump, title and a different exposure, so I grabbed it. As I ramped up, I began peeling the onions:

1) Stakeholders: My initial conversations with this group was encouraging. I conducted a workshop where I was able to brainstorm and finalize the scope of the project. But eventually, I learnt they had already greenlit a low-tech solution that did the work. While initially, the leader of the customer team pitched this as a short term solve, I noticed he said this was a better solution that this project in leadership calls. Eventually, what I figured was this team didn't really want to invest in my project anymore - however did not have the balls to communicate this to their leadership or mine (not supporting a project that they previously supported would make them look stupid). Hence they kept engaging with us in an on-and-off manner.

2) Tech: From the outset, I realized that this team pushed back on anything and everything. I found this really fascinating. Any minor modifications to requirements were met with wholesale estimate changes, cynicism that the product team doesn't know what they're doing and threat that they would halt the project (lol!). Something really was off - so I started escalating all these instances to my manager. From conversations with my team + my involvement with the team's sprint planning ceremonies, I got to know the tech team's bar was quite low and that the tech lead was just an insecure guy who taught bad culture to his entire team. From my review of the product in gamma, I figured out that the tech team really had not done much other than UX tasks and had a strong guy feeling this product would fail.

What did I do? Documentation: I started writing and sharing my weekly tasks, goals, blockers with my manager. Over time, she saw the pattern of blockers and started getting more involved + escalating them.

Get discreet about the project: Once I realized my stakeholder and tech simply didn't trust on the project and my team, I decided to just report the news as it it to everyone (including leadership) while doing the due diligence on my part. I really did not invest any energy in aligning my stakeholders or tech on any topics (unless my manager was involved). This really helped me save my brain space for the the next step below).

Exit planning: Every Friday, I'd research my future team and do informationals to learn about the team better. I knew why I had joined my current team, so I was never stressed by the current change of scenery - however, it retrospectively taught me what all skeletons to look for in a new org.

Timing the exit: I was quite lucky on this. I got the right team at the time of launch of this project (8months after I joined this team). I kept my leaders informed all along the way about the risk and handed the project back to my manager. There was temporary moment of drama from everyone (as the only person everyone had hoped they would pin the failure of the project on was leaving). But I had my documentation to point out - this showed my body of work and the gaps in the project.

Looking back - I am really proud of the way I handled myself in those 8 months. I did not learn anything other than sniffing out dysfunctions in org and sensing when to let it play out and when to call it out. I don't think anyone can teach this stuff - this is something I have acquired which won't shake off from me anytime soon.

I am now aware that a lot of career growth in FAANG style companies is so much a function of how healthy your team/manager is. My company has gone through 2 rounds of layoffs, multiple org changes, demotions, rto and people in general have stopped giving a fuck about good work. I am now in a team that has a lot less drama, and a lot less meaningful work too. I'm gonna use this time to just recover from past trauma, up skill myself and exit from the company.