They will make you believe, in the beginning that you can help fix the problems that you see, but over time they start to use phrases like “well that isn’t a priority right now” and “that isn’t a good use of your time.” The sad fact is they like the sound of fixing problems (and talking about it), but management spends such little time actually listening to employees about what would make their jobs easier/better, so little gets accomplished to fix the problems.
Asking for proper work load and time off is considered against the best interest of the company. One sales person was told the company did not care about her jet lag and that she had to fly overseas the same day as a friends wedding so that she could take off as few days as possible. Again this is an all talk and no action issue, when I was hired it was very clearly sold as unlimited PTO, they’ve since changed it to “flex PTO”. What this really means is you can only have 15-17 days off, but they like the sound of unlimited so they’ll keep calling it that. Also be prepared for 28 weeks of the year which are “blackout dates” and you aren’t allowed to take any of those days off. Those weeks include the entire months of November and December.
They expect you to work longer hours than is worth it. You should plan to miss out on dinners and after work fun often as well as work on the weekends. Management will never directly ask you to do this, but they also expect you to do an insane amount of work so in order to get any kind of success here your free time will suffer.
During COVID employees were told they would be receiving a 20% pay cut. They were also told there would be no more paid time off regardless of reason. It was later told that the 20% pay cut was actually just the company skipping an entire 2 week paycheck. So in the middle of a pandemic they just didn’t pay people for two weeks. It’s very clear that the company matters a lot more than the people who work there.
When I left there was one major reason that helped me choose to leave, and that was my manager. My direct manager was new to managing and it showed. Unfortunately in order to survive there I had to learn how to manage her and her moods and favoritisms. I brought concerns about her management style when I could but sadly it did no good and she was allowed to continue bullying myself and my fellow employees. One thing that could have fixed or at least helped alleviate the problems with my manager would have been any kind of HR. There is literally no place to go when you have an issue with a manager or fellow employee, so people have to just deal with toxic work environments.
