I used to believe Remote could salvage its mission and turn things around, but it has become painfully obvious that nobody in Remote leadership actually cares about the rank-and-file employees and the middle managers who do care are scared into subservience to executive leadership. The only people who are happy at Remote are the people who’ve been there less than 6-12 months.
• Exploitative: As a previous employee of the talent team, I’ve seen firsthand how Remote’s decision to hire only from low cost regions, specifically to save money and take advantage of cheaper labor costs, backfired. Remote clearly doesn’t believe its own mission of “the best person for the job could be anywhere in the world” because they actively avoid hiring in higher cost regions even if that’s where the best candidate resides.
• Compensation issues: Pay raises and promotions are rare, creating a lack of motivation and career growth opportunities. Previous salary adjustments were essentially “undone” by exempting employees who were adjusted from annual increases, greatly restricting promotions, and seemingly managing out employees who were at or near the top-end of their salary bands and/or in higher cost regions.
• Toxic, unhelpful leadership: Mid and senior management are unhelpful and often add to employees’ workloads without providing support. Leadership sets unreasonable expectations, requiring late-night work and sometimes actively discouraging work-life balance, which is corroborated by the introduction of the new “Intensity” value and sudden limit to “unlimited” PTO.
• Unhealthy work culture: Remote started shifting to a“high-performance” culture, which is nothing more than a justification for overworking employees, disregarding their efforts, and demanding round-the-clock availability. This is demoralizing and unsustainable. It also then gives Remote ample excuses to manage employees out or deliver unfair feedback that ultimately leads to termination in most cases.
