- The iron grip that this company has on their employees intensified more and more as I continued to work at Yardi and, I'm not going to lie, it's kind of sad to see from the rear-view mirror. In my mind, after a lot of thought, I feel like they noticed the horrid job market that was developing and the entrapment that they could commit to, knowing that there were individuals out there who wouldn't be able to get a similar opportunity, They (the higher ups who make these kinds of decisions) then executed on this, increased expectations and workloads, as well as utilized the all-seeing eye that they had to see everything that we were doing at any given moment. This pertains to way that they could get in-depth access to our work, including but not limited to the timestamps of our activities on their internally created case resolution module and the number of times we assisted peers (that metric was broken up until my termination). This can all be visualized into reports that, though useful, perfectly illustrate the iron grip that they could squeeze to be tighter and tighter until you pop right out of the organization, almost like you were never there, with an asterisk next to your name on their CRM to forever immortalize your labor – I mean, time there. Our activity on Teams was not safe, either. This is more so relative to the insane level of power that Microsoft provides to management when it comes to viewing employee activity under an organization. I found this out through social media, but I knew it was being utilized because I know this company more than a lot of people who worked and still work there (not to mention conversations that were had about statuses and the increased paranoia between myself and my colleagues about management seeing private messages). I guess, from a business perspective, why wouldn’t you make use of that if it was in front of you? That doesn’t make it right that employees are subject to this wishy-washy surveillance state. This all goes back to the intensifying of the debilitating iron grip that honestly became nonsensical at a point, especially when it came to phone support and how we couldn’t even attend meetings and training because we had to always be in the queue. All of this feels horrible when you think about things and reel over the fact that you were a part of those inflation-adjusted promotions and raises that were given in 2022, given a promoted title 7 months into your tenure and receiving close to a 30% raise. It feels like you won’t find that pay and elevated title/responsibility anywhere in the open market, at least with the experience that people of a similar tenure to me have. Some employers are expecting folks to have 2+ years of specific data entry experience to get 18 to 19 dollars an hour. It is absolutely sick and disrespectful out here and something inside of me made me feel like the incentive to get every bit of work out of one’s employees is in that kind of micro-management that is being conducted here, as well as the view that we all have of the on-fire job market. It almost felt calculated.
- I spent nearly 3 years of my life consumed by this job, countless late nights in the office and online making sure that I looked good to people who couldn’t care less about my necessity for income or my mental state. To clarify, this isn’t directed to my TL OR my manager. This is to the people that they report to, the people they must make these reports for on a weekly/annual basis. If there was ever a con that you could provide about an employer, it’s that. I went out of my way to make sure that virtually every client I encountered was assisted and their days were made better by my world-class service and I was dropped because 1) I started working a bit later in the day on the Friday before my termination, even if I still met the metric requirement for the day and 2) ) I was already on a PiP and they could just go ahead and do that to me if they wanted to, at-will state and all. LOL. I was a solid performer and was building the sense of consistency that my TL and manager wanted out of me (at least related to metrics) up until the end of my tenure at this company, and that went unnoticed by a person who will not be mentioned. If it was noticed enough, they would have just kept me on a PiP and understood how much of an asset that I was to that team, not only as an individual contributor, but as a dependable colleague, a valued contributor to scrum meetings (by way of writing the notes for every meeting and providing content/input on a consistent basis) and an extremely teachable individual who could be utilized in different capacities.
- The constant pressure and expectation to meet certain metrics along with a major lack of resources when it comes to expanding to more technically demanding roles leads me to conclude that expanded career opportunities are very limited, especially post-restructure (Summer 2023). I wanted to become a Technical Analyst very badly and that was vocalized to multiple people who were either TAs or people in positions of power. However, being put on a PiP along with no training/transition programs really existing for that led to radio silence on that front. I heard through the grapevine that a Senior/Lead TA was planning on creating some sort of training program for those who wanted to transition to the Technical Analyst team, but that was mentioned to me in the year prior with no further updates being provided. It made me feel like my great knowledge of SQL, cybersecurity fundamentals, as well as programming and data visualization software was taken for granted just to be a chat/phone support merchant. Kind of unfortunate, even if I know that I was good at the job. I hope that my colleagues who are still there get to break through into the greater opportunities that they want to attain, whether it’s eventually provided by the company they’re currently working for or by another company who wishes to employ them for their world-class skills.
