Pros
My two biggest pros are my team and my job. My team, my boss, were so absolutely supportive from Day 1, and were absolutely genuine. For my job, because this was something where I had to be part of building it from the ground up, I always felt supported and encouraged, and my contributions were never taken for granted. I always felt they trusted my experience and we could talk through any situation. This was supposed to be the place I could see spending the rest of my career at!
Cons
To be honest, it's the ELT. I realize this seems very automatic that I would/should blame the leadership, but in this instance, it's very apparent to see what went wrong: 1. Return To Office was mishandled... badly. Look, I get it-it was inevitable this would happen at most companies, and those that had been with the company before COVID expected this. However, for the large number of remote workers hired during COVID, being told last summer that if you lived within 90 minutes of one of TU's offices that you were required to go in at least twice a week... was unacceptable. What made it worse was TU, like plenty of other companies out there, made the primary reason for RTO to be about "we collab better in person, we get more done in person," and even had the nerve to quote "studies" to back their claim... without offering what studies they were referring to. At the end of the day, I don't know what it's going to take for organizations to get this, but opening RTO up and giving the employee a choice if/how/when they return will always yield a better return than forcing RTO, which will always do more damage than good. In TU's case, by doing the latter, we began to see a small but noticeable number of employees begin submitting their resignations. 2. Layoffs. The first was announced in late November of 2023 (which I was one of the 10 percent affected), and a second was announced in March of 2024. I remember the fear and anger that began spreading following the 1st layoff announcement, and I remember thinking the company has a 60-day window to assuage fears and get this situation under control... and they did nothing to answer the one question that was on everyone's minds: What's the plan moving forward so that we don't end up back in this boat (layoffs) in 6-12 months from now? In hindsight, however, maybe the reason why they couldn't assuage fears was because they knew there would be a 2nd layoff in four months. And to compound this, I've continued to read on Glassdoor from TU employees that there sounds like ANOTHER layoff later this year could happen. 3. Outsourcing: Amid the layoffs, they began to fill positions from the GCC arm of the company (to hire people from outside of the US). Now, I will tell you, I absolutely know and believe my boss was doing this to fill the vacancies of the two contractors who weren't coming back in 2024, and wasn't looking to outsource. However, he was directed to fill those positions only through GCC, which tells me the ELT had every intention of outsourcing many of the positions that were going to be vacated due to the layoff(s). What sucks is the people they're bringing in just want a job, just want to work and are absolutely lovely. But by hiring a bunch of people who live in Costa Rica during two rounds of layoffs of (primarily) US-based employees is not only unfairly casting the Costa Rican people as the villains, the ELT has also planted the seeds of resentment in the remaining employees by loudly proclaiming a simple truth without uttering a single word-every single one of you is expendable because each of you can be replaced by someone who will be far cheaper.