It was a rough five years, all things considered. With a bankruptcy filing, cost-cutting measures involving moving to ever-smaller offices, and being acquired by a private equity firm, there was always a sense that despite our best work and efforts, the company may not be around much longer. I experienced a C-suite prior to the one currently running the company not tell the employees to full story about financials, leading to utter shock when they admitted we were entering bankruptcy, and that really made me question all information I'd be given about the company going forward. The final three years I was at Aspect, salary became an issue for me. The last year I was there, we were told there would be no raises because the managers put in place by Vector Capital didn't know the employees well enough (despite the fact that many of the managers to whom we directly reported did not change), the year prior to that we were told that there would be no raises because the financials needed to look good for investors, and the year before that, everybody received raises below the COL adjustment that year. It also does not help that after the acquisition, many people (including myself) were very multi-hatted, having to do the job of more than one person due to personnel cuts and a lack of hiring of new employees overseas to help with the work-load, despite a promise to do so when explaining why 20% of the overall workforce was dismissed by March 2019.
