Where to begin. I started last year and went through the "CCPA war" with the company. Nobody that started after mid-November was given any real onboarding, just expected to figure it out and contribute. In the second week of December, Kabir gave a speech about how what we were doing wasn't enough. Told us we needed to step up or there's the door. We stepped up. 10-12 hour days. 7 days a week. They hired tons of people and threw them into the fire, expecting them to be instantly productive and turn out high quality work. To their credit, many of them did, despite the odds.
Then January hit and the work dried up and they had all this extra staff. They became obsessed with tracking hours. They began reorganizing departments. Before COVID19 even hit, people were worried about layoffs simply because the work wasn't there. Yet somehow we were still expected to be 120% utilized and 100% billable. Absolutely ridiculous.
Then COVID19 happened. OneTrust held out allowing work from home until 3/25. Right before WFH became allowed, Kabir and one of the investors spent an hour on a company wide presentation talking about how they had experience leading companies through economic downturns and how we were strong in the market, and we would come out stronger on the other side. It was wildly tone deaf, plus none of them had any experience dealing with a global health pandemic with no known end date. It was at best ignorant and insulting, at worst willingly negligent.
A couple weeks later, PSO leadership and Kabir stressed how important it was to accurately track our hours, even if it was less than 40 per week. They mentioned that they had $400M in the bank and we were uniquely positioned to weather the storm. They stressed how this was an advantage because they now had the opportunity to buy up or take advantage of competition that was less fortunate (have I already mentioned tone deaf?). Kabir stressed again, that THEY WOULD NOT BE LAYING PEOPLE OFF.
They began reorganizing departments and shifting people willingly or unwillingly into different roles. Kabir said "this is not the time to worry about your next promotion or your career path. This is the time to come together and support our customers." He for the third time, mentioned that they were no where near a position of needing to lay people off.
Less than 2 weeks later over 100 people were abruptly let go between the US and the UK offices. With no warning, employees, most of whom had started in November of 2019 or later, were told they were no longer necessary and were given 2 months severance.
Despite all the fancy talk and the "best place to work" awards, time and time again the company has shown a commitment to the bottom line and squeezing every ounce of productivity out of their people with no regard to the personal and emotional cost. Over the past 4-5 weeks, the CEO and upper management have blatantly turned to lying to their employees.
I am sure another cycle will hit where they will need to hire tons more people and their numbers will spike again and they will have tons of bragging rights all over again. But don't be fooled by it.
