I worked here for 5 years. When I started, I got the sense that something was way off. People looked burned out and miserable, management had shifty eyes. HR orientation felt weirdly disorganized. Feedback was "encouraged" but then ignored. I had to ask for the employee manual 5 different times before I finally got one.
This is the most toxic and stale work environment I’ve ever experienced. The technology is laughably outdated. It had a warehouse mentality from day one, borne from lazy union workers doing their jobs manually. There are still managers from those days, and they still treat that their employees like lazy manual laborers, mainly because those are the only types of people they know how to manage. If you work here, you’ll find yourself getting dumber by the day, just because of upper management’s self fulfilling prophecy that their employees don’t want to work, and so therefore their job and their top heavy management structure is necessary and justified. I knew one manager who’s total job responsibility was to send one weekly email. Senior Management is a club of mostly white men from the old days, who have given lip service to “diversity”, but only at the lower levels, mainly as a buffer so that they can keep their club functioning.
There is a cruelty in the air here. Management actively encourages employees to turn on each other, killing any sense of teamwork, while it’s a total hangout culture as you get further up the ladder into senior management. Petty games and decades old unproductive rituals rule. They have no competition in their industry, so employees here are busy killing each other. They have met the enemy, and the enemy is them. The longer you stay, the more your sense of fair play and teamwork at work, and in life, will be eroded. The worst part is looking around at all the nastiness and realizing how terribly unproductive it is. Soon you’ll find yourself following management’s lead, going through the motions in order to get paid, and treating your fellow employees and your staff like absolute trash and hating yourself for it, That’s when you’ll have to make a choice between your money or your values. I chose wisely and am so happy that I had the foresight to leave before that state of mind became permanent for me. I now get paid twice as much and am as productive as I want to be. Yes, it’s competitive world, but teamwork, collaboration and productivity are possible. Just not here.
You have been warned.