+ Metrics, hands down. Insane focus on them, even to the point of being highly counterproductive. Even better, I found out management was deliberately slowing down the CRM client at the end of the bonus period to diminish the bonuses researchers qualified for. I thought at first I was just being paranoid, but then found irrefutable evidence supporting it. Deep credibility loss of the company at this point, especially since they quietly buried my findings.
+ 2 minute phone calls. Had a top multifamily client who initially was providing essential data, but never ending continuous calls and harassment by sales and other researchers reversed the high profile client's relationship completely and refused to provide ANY information going forward. I don't blame the researchers/sales at all, they had to keep up with their calls somehow. Also, just FYI, one reason you lost a major client in my market (who shall remain nameless) was due to the phone calls. So, good decision to keep this "award winning" metric.
+ Bonuses. Was told I did everything necessary to earn a bonus one quarter, and it was not paid out despite verbal assurances from Director. That's NOT ok, I kept my end of the bargain in every measure, but the company refused to honor their end of the bargain, and were quite aggressively arrogant about it as well. Needless to say, after that, I merely focused on minimum standards. Why waste my time and resources to end up with nothing? Well, ok, I did get something, a lack of motivation that the clients could read like a book, even over the phone. And no, I wasn't deliberately unmotivated, just kind of hard to keep positive when your misleading me for nonsensical reasons.
+ Culture. Based on backstabbing, gossip, and frivolous reasons for getting people fired. As much as the company denies this, it's pretty obvious. I was there for 8 plus years, pulling the wool over my eyes is not going to work at this stage. I have every reason to believe the petty culture will continue. Ironically, I was on the good end of this culture, but felt silently ashamed to be a part of it.
+ Big Brother Atmosphere. People were afraid to hang out in the break room, for good reason. People felt it was bugged, and some conversations I overheard between managers, directors and even VPs confirmed they were at least spying on their employees in weird ways. Yes, it's your company, but does management have enough to do? Maybe 2 minute phone calls for each manager, that way you can keep them busy and explain the overhead to the stockholders.
