Salary Secrecy, Toxic Culture, & A Neglected Suggestion Box Is Your HR Manager - Anonymous employee Plugable Employee Review

1) The benefits package is pathetic and not even close to being competitive. Bernie will say this is because Plugable is a "small startup", except (based on annual profits and number of employees hired) that hasn't been true since at least 2015. Your $3,000 deductible health plan offers barely any coverage even after the high deductible is met. Bernie tries to make this plan seem better by padding it with a $3,000 HSA that slowly accumulates over the course of each year instead of providing it as a lump sum in the beginning of every year to make the crappy health plan usable throughout the year. Good luck to your spouse or child add-ons, as they won't get the HSA benefits that make this high deductible health plan usable. 2) You get barely any sick time and vacation time, and you can't use sick days for vacation. So if you're a healthy person, you just got screwed out of 1 of your 2 weeks of paid time off, unless you play hooky. 3) Seniority doesn't mean anything here. You could work here for 5+ years and still be dealing with the same pathetic paid time off package that is offered to every brand new employee and is now the required minimum paid time off based on Washington State's recent passing of Initiative 1433. You don't get rewarded for sticking around here, and the revolving door effect has been in play for years. 4) Even when you're a salaried employee, Bernie and Gary will nickel and dime your time every week and do so very inconsistently across all of the employees. They manage wage employees with far less scrutiny. They have discussed using the entrance scanners as an indirect way to document the hours salaried employees are working, which is extremely illegal. You can choose either salary or wage. You can't have it both ways. "Sourly" is not a legal way to pay employees. 5) If you dare to exercise your salary sharing rights, that were given to all Americans in 1935 as part of the The National Labor Relations Act, Bernie will remind you that Plugable has a "Salary Secrecy" policy as part of its "company culture". He won't tell you that you're obligated to follow it, because he could easily get sued for something like that, but he will find a way to punish you indirectly if you share your salary information with anyone else at the company, because it's against "company culture". Punishment usually comes in the form of devaluing your salary over time with extremely vague excuses for not offering decent raises regularly. 6) Bernie only offers "overtime" for illegally earning more paid time off if you happen to be a salaried Product Owner. Otherwise, enjoy your piddly 2 weeks of paid time off every year. Expect to take unpaid time off if you have a medical emergency or if you want a vacation longer than 5 days. 7) Bernie and Gary are too overwhelmed with their own responsibilities to manage the company and its employees properly. Over the years, multiple employees have suggested that they get another person in management to help them, but they refuse because that would require them to admit that they need help. Bernie insists on being the CEO to at least three different companies at once, making matters much worse. 8) Bernie doesn't know how to manage women, especially if their job involves art and creativity. He allows his "flat hierarchy" structure to harass creative talent as if non-creative employees are all equally entitled to an opinion about a job that none of them are qualified to speak to or perform themselves. Typical mansplaining from various product owners will ensue on a daily basis, because it is encouraged by Bernie. Toxic bro culture is rewarded here. 9) If you're a woman who is confident and not afraid to politely and professionally speak your mind, Bernie punishes you for it in terms of undervaluing your salary and outright refusal in reigning in the toxic male culture he's cultivated in his office. 10) Though Bernie has never created art himself, and in spite of his lack of an art degree, he feels that his opinion of art is always the best opinion and is incapable of giving constructive criticism on this matter, because he doesn't have an artistic bone in his body (the bizarre art decorating the office is proof of this). 11) If your job involves marketing or creativity, and you were originally hired to work for Plugable, expect to be employed by up to three different child companies of Bernie's simultaneously under the "Leancode LLC" parent company, because he's too cheap to hire separate employees for his failing pet projects that so far only serve to divert money and time from the only company of Bernie's that's currently making a profit: Plugable. 12) Bernie is blatantly inconsistent with company policies across Plugable and Efficient Era in spite of them sharing a building and the fact that Efficient Era will likely never be able to pay for itself, let alone ever hope to turn a profit. Efficient Era employees can enjoy "remote work days" on a weekly basis, but Plugable employees can't telecommute for any reason. Ritu is a completely remote employee at Efficient Era, and Plugable employees will never be awarded the same privilege even if your position is completely capable of being handled remotely. 13) Bernie intentionally avoids documenting company policies, because he likes to be able to change them without notice on a whim, but doesn't want to own up to it by actually documenting those policies anywhere. 14) Because Bernie knows that any HR specialist with a couple of brain cells to rub together could easily point out the highly illegal activities originating from Plugable management, he has proudly announced (without provocation and on multiple occasions) that Plugable will never, ever have an HR person in any capacity. Bernie thinks that a suggestions box for Plugable is an acceptable substitute, and he's been actively avoiding reading those suggestions for at least the last year of its existence, negating its purpose entirely.