Pros
- Competitive Salaries - Do their best to give great benefits - Values donating their time and money to local charities - Remote employees are given an incredible amount of flexibility and trust - The company is growing and doing well. Hopefully, the issues with work culture are mitigated as some of the problematic employees have lost their grip on every aspect of office life.
Cons
- There is a sharp divide between the lives of the remote employees and the office employes. Remote staff is treated well in general, however, the office staff are beholden to family and friends of the owners who create an incredibly toxic office culture. There was a clear "in group" and plenty of favoritism. - HR did not educate employees on their rights when sick or in need of time off. Instead HR threatened to take away PTO or not pay an employee for federal and state protected reasons to miss work. - Job duties were constantly changed, most often without our input or allowing us to give meaningful feedback on how the duty is performed. I was taken off projects I was getting fabulous feedback on and literally moved to other duties out of spite. My manager knew I disliked these tasks and that I was bad at them; she told me as much to my face. (And let me emphasize, I was bad at these duties because they were entirely outside of my experience, my department, and any training I was given. I had made no statements to the company that I was good at these kinds of tasks.) I believe this was done to further emphasize I was in the "out-group" and to paint me as someone who was incapable. - At one point, I had 4 "managers" in terms of the people I had to report to, receive projects from, and take feedback from. Of course none of these people communicated with each other about my workload or the variety of expectations they had for me. They dumped projects on me at will, often without explanation, and went their way. When I left the company, my manager literally had to ask me to make a list of my responsibilities because she didn't know. - Intense micromanagement; If one of my managers told me to send an email at 3pm, she would literally pop by my desk and 3:02, demand I drop my detail-intensive data work, and send that completely non-urgent email. Then she would gossip about my poor performance when I missed details because of her interruptions. Also, they had a camera on the front door and HR would take notes on who left at what time each day. - Employees who were disliked by family and close friends were pushed out of the company, condescended to, and ganged up on by managers, etc. Examples 1: A family member of the owner cornered me in a bathroom, while she was drunk at a work event, and actually told me she wanted me to quit. When I left the bathroom, I avoided my colleagues so I could compose myself by chatting to a random group of people in the venue for 30 minutes. During this time, one of the owners stood behind me and stared at me, monitoring my behavior. The next day the woman who had cornered me had the audacity to berate me for "leaving the company event" and putting them in the position of having to "babysit" me. I had to apologize to the owners like a child. 2: One very competent employee was routinely demeaned, yelled at, and called stupid by a department head who was long-time friends of the family. HR didn't care. All HR did was report the employee seemed to be souring to the atmosphere in the office and said employee was quickly dumped for zero cause. 3: Five top company executives (all family and friends of the owners), pulled me into an unscheduled, unprepared for disciplinary meeting because I mentioned to a colleague that I had to ask permission to use the restroom. Aside from this seeming like a huge overreaction on their part, everyone was far more concerned that I had made it look like I was being micromanaged than with whether or not I was actually being micromanaged to death. During this meeting I was terrified of losing my job on the spot, so said I was joking. But the truth is, yes, I I did have to "notify" my manager when I needed to use the restroom. Yes, I did have to "notify" my manager when I left my desk for any reason. Yes, my manager did follow me into the bathroom on more than one occasion. Yes, once I did have to explain that I was actually pooping when my manager called and then texted me while I was on the toilet. And yes, there were times when my manager told me to wait and go later or told me that I had no business leaving when I did use the restroom... If that's not having to "ask for permission" what the heck is it?
