There are many things that I hated about Altitude Labs that I ended up telling my boss in her face that I quit.
Before I joined the company I asked “how many designers do you have at the company?” and my boss said “we have 3 designers”. But when I joined, I was the only designer there. They lied to me and immediately I already lost trust in my bosses. Same thing happened with my ex colleague who asked how many developers they had, and was told the company had 10. But he was the only one as well.
The biggest reason why I left was when my boss asked me to take on a 6th client project. I told her that I could not because I had too much work on my plate to handle.
She said, “you can’t take on any more projects, the other designer says she can’t take on any more projects, what do you suggest we should do if we want to take on more projects in the future?”
I said, “hire more designers, lessen the workload?“. She said, “Are you stupid?“. I was like “huh what?“. She said, “Do you know why we are not hiring any designers and why we are hiring more software engineers?“. I said “no”. “I told you in our last meeting it’s because the software engineers are raking in 200k in profits per person per month whereas the designers are making a loss every single time and when the CTO asks to hire more software engineers, I gave the go ahead to hire more of them, and because that wasn’t your answer shows me that you really are stupid and an incompetent person”.
The logic here didn’t make sense because the software engineers couldn’t start building anything until they got the designs. And it’s the designers that are trying to close the deals by themselves. Without the help from any of the 3 founders.
And because my boss likes to call me stupid almost every day, shows me that she was very disrespectful to me, even though I was able to produce very good work in a short amount of time.
At that point, I knew what my boss was trying to do. She was taking a huge gamble. She wants me to take on a 6th client project no matter what.
So in reaction, I said to her “you are right, you don’t need any designers because they’re bringing you a loss every single time. I am done working for you. Now it looks like you have to hire more designers”. When I told her that, she was thinking that just one person is going to leave the company which isn’t a big deal. But I told her that 3 more people are also planning to leave the company as well, and she looked devastated.
She would then use her lie tactics and asked me to be honest with her to collect information from me. Like to name the people who are going to leave the company. But I told her “why should I tell you?” and she was like “because I’m asking” and I said, “I don’t care, go figure it out yourself”.
She thought I was bluffing, but in the end, in addition to me leaving, the company lost both designers, their only data scientist, and one software engineer. All of which were key to the company’s success. They then hired one Junior UI/UX Designer fresh out of university right after their last designer resigned. They had a good design intern that worked for 2 weeks but he decided to quit because two of my bosses shouted at him.
When I caught her insulting me on Slack, and asked her why she always insults me on a daily basis, she said: “because I was inspired by someone in the company that continues to act condescending towards me”. And I said, “that’s not good, you’re supposed to be someone that people can look up to, but you have decided to turn me your enemy”. She couldn’t talk back to me on that one.
The next day, she told me to work from home until my contract ends. Not even allowing me to buy everyone snacks as a parting gift. I told everyone in the company about it, including the newcomers. None of the 3 founders bothered to talk to me. When I look at the rest of the people who decided to stay, they gave me the impression that they have nowhere else to go. And they thought it was okay for Altitude Labs to give them a low salary because it’s a startup lol.
One of them who was promoted to senior thinks his title is so cool that he felt Altitude Labs is rewarding him for his contribution, even though he’s only been with the company for 6 months. I was there for 2.5 years lol.
My other colleague who was also promoted to senior kept asking my boss where’s the new contract or new salary. But she kept saying she’ll get back to him. But there was still no word after a month. So he decided to submit his resignation as well.
Other reasons why I left the company include:
1. Very low salary + 9 working holidays
2. They never admit their own mistakes
3. They always lie to you, which means you lose trust in them
4. They don’t respect the work that you do, even when you know yourself that you did a good job
5. They give you a big task at the last minute to OT numerous of times
6. They shout at you if they think you’re not performing well enough
7. They’re always late to client meetings, so you have to take over for the first 15 mins, especially when you have no experience handling clients in the first place.
8. They don’t even know what you’re going through and think you’re not doing as much as work as the software engineers.
9. They treat you like cheap labour
10. Their profit share is a lie. It doesn’t give you more profits and it eats into your salary for contributing. You have to work even harder to close more deals. And the ones getting the biggest cut are the 3 founders who only dumps the client on us. Why work 10 times harder than other companies and get little in return?
11. They said “in exchange for working for Altitude Labs, you get to LEARN”. But that’s really stupid, because I can go to another company and learn there as well. And get a higher salary and more job benefits on top of that. 12. The boss is very stingy, she refuses to pay a high salary, but she has 3 cars, 2 maids, 1 private driver, and lives in a 3000 sq ft apartment in the mid levels. My other boss always eat at some restaurant that costs more than $200 per meal at lunch time.
13. They never give farewell parties to their own employees. But they recently start giving it to their interns because they want to portray to the world that the company is nice and friendly when really it isn’t.
14. They complained they couldn’t do bank transfer to any one in the company and used me as an example saying because my name was too long, the bank rejected them, so they always give us cheques instead. But in reality, they simply don’t know how to do bank transfers. Because the company I’m working for right now, has no problem setting it up.
15. Did I mention that they are very stingy about paying a high salary?
16. They use crack design softwares
17. “I never said that” is what my boss always say. For example when I told her that she had already agreed that I’ll have my holiday starting tomorrow, she’ll say “I never said that”, and when I showed her the email that she agreed to, it totally shut her up.
18. They like to insult their own employees
19. They don’t care about their own employees, they only care about the money.
20. They like to play favourites
21. They said the reason why they won’t promote me or why I don’t deserve a higher salary was because I’m a fresh graduate with no working experience. And said that they will be the ones to teach me. And after learning from them, did my salary go up? Only by a few hundred dollars per year.
22. They threaten former employees for writing bad reviews about their company and would even go as far as to call their employers they would take legal action for defamation. My company doesn't care about them and thinks they're crap. And nothing I said about the company was false. They said a lawyer's letter will be sent to me shortly if I don't remove the review but it never arrived.
23. They refuse to reimburse me for my Adobe subscription software I was using for their client projects. They said that when they hired the designers, they expect them to have already bought the software. My company right now is reimbursing me lol.
