Your growth, variable pay, bonuses, promotion, demotion, increment etc, falls in the hands of the founder, who is hardly there to assess you. So, it falls in the hands of the founding team members who are close to the founder. This leads to a negative work culture of working to impress. This is due to lack of measurable metrics for the company to actually value an employee. I have seen people who made incredible sales be fired because the founder had a bad opinion of the person and other people last extremely long in the company, enjoying increments without any sales because the founder has a soft corner for the person. Both these people were hired to sell as salesmen.
The HR is a show puppet the founder uses to deliver news to you. The HR is incapable/kept incapable of bringing any sort of change to the organization after hearing the concerns of the employees. Hence, your concerns are heard but not heeded to.
The variable pay structure and retention bonus is highly manipulatable by the company. The variable pay which will be almost 50% of your CTC, but you will never be enlightened by the company of how to achieve it. Hence, you won't know how to achieve it bringing me back to my first point.
A reward, rather than being given to you in front of a crowd, is given to you behind everyone's back with a clause of taking back the reward if you speak about it. I received an increment and had to still sulk about my salary with all my peers because if they got to know, I'll lose my increment.
Career growth trajectory is extremely poor. The company mandates you very early on to sign a document that you can't join any competitor or even a company in the interior design industry. This makes it very difficult for you to make a switch. Almost 50% of the people who left joined a bank.
