A case study in why you can't run a 4000 person company like a startup - Technical Services Engineer Epic Employee Review

While they claim that total hours worked are not a factor in evaluations, it is very obvious that anybody working under "average" (a fluid and secret number) hours per week is unsatisfactory, and they will not hesitate to fire people. The idea that employees will have priorities away from work is a completely alien concept. Furthermore, the customer loads assigned to each employee are completely unreasonable. You will have multiple customers, they will each expect your undivided attention, and you will not be allowed to have any say in the relative priority of issues. If the customer says you have to do it, you have to. You won't be able to consider what other customers have going on when you discuss deadlines. Customers are asked to give "feedback" on their TS, and if management hears that issues aren't getting resolved fast enough, they will not hesitate to fire people. Management (Team leads, or "TLs") are promoted from within. Due to the enormous rate of turnover, they often have ~2 years of experience with the company when promoted, it's extremely hit or miss how skilled they turn out to be as managers. The company is openly hostile to the idea of bringing people in from the outside with management experience. This is, I believe, born from the days when the company was a small, tight group of people with shared responsibilities. While admirable, this ideal simply does not work on the scale that the company has grown, particularly given the degree of ruthlessness which they display in employee evaluation. It's one thing to take a casual attitude towards chain of command if it's understood that people will be evaluated in that context, but it just doesn't play out that way. They openly lie in the recruitment process. As recently as 6 months ago, potential TS were told they should expect to work 40-45 hours per week (I've heard that this recently jumped to 45-40, which is still not true). They claim flexible hours, which is not true. They emphasize the technical troubleshooting aspects of the TS job, but once hired they make a point of emphasizing that they expect TS to be outstanding in both technical and project management skills, but the latter is hardly discussed in the interview. Quite simply, there is an obvious directive from the top of the company that employees are disposable parts, and they employ shady recruiting tactics to keep up with the rate of growth. The lack of solid management means that there is virtually no recourse for unsatisfied employees, and no flexibility in letting people play to their strengths. In a small company, you can probably find those people, but not on the scale the company now is, particularly if you're not upfront about what you're looking for. It also doesn't help that the skills at the company aren't at all portable. Cache and VB6 are not in very high demand elsewhere.