Bear with me…
- A2F is almost 20 years into its operations but still masquerades around like a startup with the leadership blaming everyone but themselves for their many failures. They'll say if they have been in business for so long then they must be doing something “right” - the husband-and-wife Founders are delusional enough to overestimate their role and contribution in the continuation of the organization. The fact that the A2F still exists is because of the many employees who have worked hard and smart to produce good work despite and not because of the Founders. And they have been rewarded by being thrown or pushed out of A2F.
-If despite poor management decisions, choosing to work on loss-making projects and having to pay tax penalties among other more questionable things, the Founders continue to blame the financial distress of the company on “external” factors, one would begin to wonder how long A2F will actually last. It is the Founders’ pure luck that they have not been reported to and caught by the right authorities to shut them down yet.
- Or perhaps there is a reason why they mostly hire fresh-out-of-school immigrants who are new to the country, with limited support system, little accumulated wealth, and scarce knowledge of legal recourse in the US or Germany. They know they can mistreat these employees with the minimum risk of facing legal consequences.
- If you are an immigrant, kindly do not place your future in their immoral hands. The founders are not entirely incompetent but highly morally corrupt enough to go back on their promises and play with your futures.
- Lack of trust in senior management is rife. Every person placed at a senior position is always tip toeing around the CEO. Everyone is afraid of disappointing the CEO because they might get fired next day. No matter how good you are as an employee, if it is your turn to be the target of the CEO founder’s displeasure, then it’s a goodbye! This results in managers and HR not being able to do their job of protecting the employees’ interests and investing in their career growth because that is in direct conflict to what the CEO wants. So, plaster a smile on your face every day when you greet him and do not question him ever.
- If the Founders keep insisting that "we are like a family" - it means that they will not appreciate boundaries, they will expect the employees to work tirelessly without giving them rewards or appreciation, and the employees will be made to feel indebted to the CEO for even paying their sub-par salaries. The employees are overworked, underpaid, underappreciated working without any rewards, bonuses, or decent annual raises in income. And we are still expected to not complain. (I guess this exhaustive review is the result of bottling it all in for some time now)
- On the topic of sub-par salaries, the company starting in 2023 has not been paying its employees their monthly salaries on time with delays amounting up to 2 to 3 months or more. And this not the first time this has happened. These delays and other decisions made by the management has had damaging ripple effects to all the employees on a personal and professional level. How a company handles a tough time reveals a lot about the character of the firm and its decision makers (in this case the infamous ‘Founders’, because no one else in the senior management is ever allowed to have a say in anything) - choosing to open a physical office in Portugal (at a time where your company is facing financial problems and remote work is more acceptable than ever before) over paying your employees in US or Germany their salaries is not reflective of a company that cares for its employees.
- Forget about bad times, even in good times, there has been no investment in the growth of employees. If the boss starts harping about in June 2022 that the company is already in profits but come December you are told that bonuses will not be given out because the company did not make any profits, you know something is wrong. They lack the basic understanding that a ‘company’ is made from its ‘people’, its ‘employees’. Wanting to save A2F by lowering labor costs (hiring in Portugal and firing in US/Germany) is not really saving the ‘company’. They are just saving their failing selves from facing their blunders.
-They have NEVER listened to their employees and continue to distrust even those employees who have been with A2F for longer than a year or two. The CEO founder is so afraid of letting go and so involved in everything (micromanaging to the hilt) that he cannot trust his employees to even do their jobs. After working and producing good results for A2F for over a year you still won’t be trusted to work from home because they think you will ‘not work at home’. They refuse to treat you like responsible adults. They say coming to the office creates a good office culture. They first need to learn the definitions of ‘good’ and ‘culture’. Forcing your employees to participate in “potlucks” every month and passing it off as ‘team building activity’ will not cut it. The work model where the team is split between two countries and at most your meetings are with one or two people in your team, you really do not need to be in the office to be productive. This shows that the Founders have zero regard for your time. Zero!
- This has become a place, where you compromise on the quality of work to run behind deadlines so that A2F can get the payments from the clients to be able to pay the employees their already delayed salaries. They cannot sustain their finances well enough and long enough to give their employees a breathing space from this kind of a work culture. There is nothing wrong with a “for-profit” company like A2F to want to run behind money, but if that money is not getting translated into good salaries and better work-life balance for the employees, then the least that A2F can do specially by occupying a space in International Development sector is to take up projects that give purpose and meaning to the work of the employees. Unfortunately, there is very little learning and no meaning in the work you will do here. Two things: a) they need to either get a financial advisor, or b) quit the international development space.
- Some would say that this is a for profit organization, so poor management, lower salaries, and putting the company first are all common characteristics of these kinds of firms. Well, I would take all of this for a firm, having just whose name on my resume will open more doors for me. I wouldn’t risk my mental health for A2F and the nobodies it is run by.