The technology department was already struggling lately due to upper-management creating stressful work environments with unrealistic deadlines and overpromising to stakeholders. Be prepared to drop everything to put out fires that management creates. Lots of projects are dropped in your lap just because "management wants this now", even if it's not possible to complete in the given timeline. Development and QA were promised by upper-management that we were not going back into office full-time because WFH has been such a great increase in productivity and morale. On December 13, 2022, for a reason management still can't explain, they are removing WFH 100%. Upper-management tried to claim that the department was "slipping" and that we weren't "firing on all cylinders", when they had zero data to back this up and there was no communication from management prior to this announcement that anything was wrong, in fact, they have only been applauding the hard work we've been putting in. They used buzz-words to justify their decision like "collaboration", "innovation", and of course the classic - "culture". Being crammed into a gray-walled prison where we still have remote meetings and even remote into another computer when we are physically on campus is incredibly confusing to employees, especially when these are the exact things we are doing from home. Not a single coworker in my entire department thinks this was the right call and unfortunately, this company will lose most of its top talent due to this decision. Many employees were hired into this company with the expectation they would work remotely 4 of the 5 days in the work week. In this decision, employees have invested lots of money into a nice home work setup and many don't live anywhere near the corporate office. Our lives were built around this schedule and management gave us less than 30 days to uproot our lives to accommodate being in office just so management can breathe down our necks, even though productivity has been astounding since being WFH. This company also likes to silence their employees’ concerns. During the video call announcement that they were removing WFH, they disabled the public-facing chat, and selectively read questions from the questions that were being sent to them. A public forum was provided in the company, where employees voiced genuine concerns about their lives in regards to accommodations and how much havoc this decision is causing and they disabled comments there, too. Employees were distraught by this rash decision and needed to be heard, but they simply copy/pasted the same response to everyone, gaslighting them in the process. Given the clear understanding that this decision would impact employees in a very negative way, it is my belief that this upper-management used this decision in place of a mass layoff because they knew most of the department would leave. So many of us loved working here before management treated us this way with absolutely no regard or concern to our mental wellness. So many of us trusted this company to provide a great career. This decision is forcing so many loyal employees out the door and it's so unfortunate because it didn't have to be this way at all. One of the core values in this company is "we care". I am sad to report that this is absolutely not the case when it comes to their employees.
