Where to begin?
Let's start with upper management - specifically, the CEO.
- He is profoundly dishonest. He truly does not care about business ethics whatsoever. He will make promises to you and to the consultants that he has absolutely no intention of keeping.
- As a follow-up to that: He will gaslight you. Bring a recording device into every meeting with him, because he WILL deny anything and everything he has ever said to you, even when faced with written, dated notes taken from previous meetings.
- He has no business plan at all. This is evidenced by my own experience, which involved him recruiting me very actively over the course of 2-3 months and telling me that they had an urgent need for account management. Less than two months after I was hired, he called me from India (where he goes during December/January) less than a week before Christmas and told me that my position was being eliminated because he decided that he was wrong, and there wasn't a need for account management after all.
- He openly prefers to work with men. and makes it painfully obvious that he neither trusts nor respects women. He and the other male employee at the NJ office were rarely in the office; however, as a woman, I could only work remote during weather emergencies, and I had to account for nearly every minute of the day (even on days when I had multiple client meetings, listed on a shared calendar with names, times, and locations). Additionally, both I and the other female employee in the office had an application on our laptops that tracked everything we did - it would lock your computer up if you stepped away from the computer for more than four (4!) minutes, and before you could get back in you had to type a message explaining why you were not working during that time. Our male colleague did not have this application installed.
- He will use any personal information you divulge against you. If you have a family, if you have hobbies, if you have a side gig - any of that is fuel for him to argue you're not fully committed to your job, and he will use it as an excuse to deny you raises, promotions, etc.
Next, the general environment/culture:
- Like I said above: Extreme sexism is the rule of the day. A male colleague left a massive time-sensitive project unfinished, and it was up to the female colleagues to finish it after he went to India for the holidays. He then blamed us when it was not completed in time.
- Again, from the top down: Dishonesty runs rampant. When I was recruited, I was told the position was in Edison, 40 minutes from my home. Then, when I got into negotiation regarding the offer, I was told that they were just *planning to move* to Edison and the office was actually in Lyndhurst (1.5-2 hours away from me). When I pointed out that this would be a huge difference in commute time and cost, I was assured they would be moving within a month. Two months later, when I was laid off, we still had not moved and had no set moving date in place.
- There is no training process at all. I came to work, and my male colleague was given the responsibility of training me. Unfortunately, he gave me no direction; in fact, he was openly dismissive, sarcastic, and downright nasty. When I asked questions and tried to get constructive feedback on my work from either him or the CEO (my boss), I was ignored and given constantly conflicting information. I went ahead and took initiative, using my skills and professionalism to move forward as best as I could to achieve the (extremely nebulous) goals they had set for me. Then I was only told that I was wrong or that I was overstepping my bounds, until it finally got to the point where I was completely hamstrung.
- There is no HR department, no handbook, and no employee directory of who you should go to for what. As a new employee, it's bewildering and frustrating to go to 5-6 different people to try to get an answer and still not get one.
- The job you think you're being hired for is not the job you will end up doing. Nearly everyone winds up being shoehorned into a sales role, because upper management is under the mistaken impression that this is the only activity that matters because it's where they see money most quickly. Because of this, every other "department" is in shambles, because nothing is organized or prioritized correctly. That's why there is MASSIVE TURNOVER. No intelligent, talented person stays long.
It's a waking nightmare, honestly. I wanted so badly to make this job work and I would've stuck it out a lot longer if they hadn't decided that I was not necessary.
