Upper management was very toxic and would retaliate if you complained. Most of my team was across the US and we would meet virtually for various projects. I was on this team for about 9 months, but on a previous engagement where I was completely integrated in the client’s company, I was there for 10 months. The client canceled their contract with CLA to save money and I was basically thrown on a different team after. They expected a lot out of us and we never got appreciation from Principals unless we were making the firm money. I received feedback from Directors time and time again about how great I was doing, but upper management didn’t care about the quality of work in terms of performance. What was important to them was that I log my hours and that most of the time I logged, I was charging clients for it. They told us they review performance on an annual basis, yet I was heavily scrutinized if I wasn’t performing to their expectations. We were never given a bonus, so we basically were treated like robots. They wanted us to do our work and be quiet. I complained once and as soon as I complained, I was treated much differently than my peers. I worked my butt off doing jobs that were assigned to me as well as the jobs of others but was told I wasn’t doing enough, I guess because I was doing it too quickly. They told me I needed to go in the office at a minimum of 3 days, even though no one else on my team was required to do that. I started going into the office anyways and charging more hours and still was ultimately let go for performance reasons. When I was let go, my supervisor had absolutely no empathy towards me. I was treated like a robot on a screen. I have a life outside of work, a family and kids. No person should be treated like they’re a slave and that’s exactly how I felt.
