Completely toxic environment. Went from being my dream job to a living nightmare, and it all comes down to our new CEO, Laura, who has absolutely no idea about our business and refuses to listen or learn. It’s her way or the highway. If you dare to say anything besides a blind and enthusiastic “YES!”, be prepared to be shown the door.
Laura (CEO) is on a complete tear to prove herself by raising stock price by any means necessary, even if it’s not in the best interest of the company, clients, or employees. She is clearly not here for a long time so she doesn’t care about the long-term health of the company; she just wants to put in her 5 years and prove her value as CEO via stock price. She’s constantly firing and replacing senior and executive leadership with her buddies from CIBC (where she worked previously) - anytime there’s an announcement about a new high-level hire, you can be assured their LinkedIn page reflects they were most recently employed at CIBC. So she’s surrounding herself with friends who will now owe their jobs and livelihoods to her; definitely a good way to make sure you hold onto total control and remain the dictator you so clearly are. Who would dare stand up to the woman that gave them their shiny new executive position?! How is the board allowing her to completely fill the executive leadership positions with personal friends and nepotism hires? How is this ethical?
She decided to start an office in Ireland obviously for tax breaks and is laying off huge numbers of people in North America with decades of experience to replace them with entry level hires in Ireland. And they think this will be great for the business and not cause any client disruption or issues, which is a complete joke. Any employees that ask questions or raise concerns about the Ireland move and its impacts are shushed up and made to feel like you aren’t being a “team player” and this will be held against you. They don’t want your advice or your experience or your concerns; they just want you to blindly do as they say, even if you know it’s wrong or a terrible idea with negative consequences.
If you aren’t a “yes man” who will do exactly what Laura wants, you will be shown the door.
All of the people leaders have absolutely no power to make decisions anymore, even simple decisions such as whether an employee can have a remote work exception need to be escalated to the CEO, who rejects the exception 99% of the time because she doesn’t actually care about the employees as people. Anyone who does have a remote work exception has been told that anytime they apply for a new position (even a lateral move) they will lose their remote work status and have to switch to hybrid (3 days a week in office). So if you work remote, you have no chance for any advancement or even a lateral career change without having to give up your remote status, which for some people isn’t feasible because they may not live close enough to an office to be able to commute. So these people are now stuck in a job with absolutely no chance for advancement or development because the CEO made an RTO policy that has no room for exceptions and she refuses to make any changes.
Everything is falling apart, and it 100% comes down to Laura. As someone that’s been with the company for over a decade and cares deeply about what I do and the people I work with, this is infuriating to watch one person completely destroy the company while NO ONE IN POWER DOES ANYTHING ABOUT IT. I am beyond shocked that senior leadership and the board are so terrified of Laura that they won’t speak up and try to rein her in. If something doesn’t change soon, things will never recover.
