Pros
Expected to be available to work or take meetings over vacations, evenings, weekends. They say it’s not like this but is. True in my case and others. Many don't stay in the office to work in the evenings/weekends but will then take their laptops home and continue to work.
Turn over is very frequent, with new hires often leaving within the first 1 - 8 months. Multiple departments are hemorrhaging employees and have 1 person left because this company can’t keep them.
Like others have stated, terrible handling of covid. Was ordered to come back to the office July 2020, 2 days a week. If that gives you an indicator to how valuable you will feel to this company. Doesn’t exactly foster a positive work environment when you know the ceo/upper management would gladly risk your life just to have people in the office during a worldwide catastrophic event. After vaccines became available many people weren’t alerted when someone they worked closely with had it. Covid still works its way through the office every few months.
Zero WFH tolerance. If you’re feeling a bit sick but can work from home, you’ll have to either come into the office or take a sick day. People will still come into the office if their partner and kids are sick with Covid. This results in waves of Covid/flu/cold ripping its way through the office every 3 months. HRs solution to this is to send passive-aggressive emails about people getting flu shots when too many people are taking sick days. They are now offering in-office flu shots and asking everyone to get it done rather than giving employees some WFH flexibility when not feeling well.
Chaotic work processes. No rhyme or order. No reason for why something is urgent, other than someone decided on a whim it is. Then, a few days or weeks later will decide it wasn’t, but progress or work you did in that time will be discarded. This is the norm for every project, not the exception. You'd think after so many years they would understand or implement some sort of process, but every project or launch is like the first project or launch they've ever done.
No support from upper management. This seems vague but it is what it is. Has a tangible impact on your job and day to day and is grossly apparent.
There seems to be an attitude that if you’re not overloaded with work beyond your capacity, then you aren’t really working.
New program rolled out from hr that requires employees to develop skills outside of work that will benefit the their job/the company. Taking classes, reading books, etc, in order to get a raise. I don’t know about you but I don’t want to be required to spend my free time outside of work hours towards work. From the email they sent out 5/9 “LinkedIn Learning courses for personal development should be completed outside of office hours.”
On top of this, HR seem to be rolling out a lot of “programs” that put the burden of work on employees that are very clearly just for their own visibility to the CEO to make them look good, but it puts unnecessary work on us on top of our workload.
4 days a week in the office. Makes work life balance difficult. Impacts energy and stress levels. Do not underestimate the extent to which being in the office 4 days a week will drain you, especially an unpredictable workplace like this.
Workplace and workload is even more chaotic and heavy when the ceo comes into the office once a month for a week. Openly berates and has outbursts at people. While hes at the office you can’t put your jacket on the back of your chair, you can’t eat at your desk otherwise he’ll throw the food away, the window shades need to be drawn halfway down the window and your desk has to be very clean and tidy. Yes, this is for real, no it’s not an exaggeration. Everyone at the company knows. He frequently and regularly screams at people and makes them cry.
People being long-time employees doesn’t mean anything and are not indicators of happiness at the company. Many of them feel undervalued, are angry, demotivated and overworked by the work culture here. Some are on mood medications are open about the fact that the job is the only reason why they’re on it. Why they don’t look elsewhere I don’t know. Many seem afraid to leave.
If you believe this review or others are just a few disgruntled employees and decide to accept a job, you’ll find out very quickly, likely within two weeks, that it’s not.
Cons
The office has some nice people.
