Senior leadership has ruined this company. I was hired right at the tail end of Tilson's golden era before the new engineering senior management was brought in and I witnessed this once great company completely spiral downward. The new leaders immediately put in place directives to maximize efficiency at any cost, completely misunderstanding the nature of what they were even doing. A great example of this was when I was told by a senior VP to cease work improving an algorithm on a new program I had just been trained on but then told to improve my efficiency and familiarity with said program. So I was to get good at using the program, but not too good that I could improve my work tasks on it? It was clear to me this VP had no idea what they were talking about but they certainly liked to act like they did. Senior leadership's cluelessness was also evident in their constant requests for us to provide meaningless metrics about our design jobs, as if total measurements on fiber length meant anything about the scope, scale, or complexity of a particular design. They tried treating design work as an assembly line operation instead of recognizing that it is nuanced and complex and that no two jobs are ever quite the same. This problem was further worsened by a VP's insistence on micromanaging lower level engineers despite not having any understanding about what the work was actually like. Instances like these showcased the depth of senior leadership's obliviousness and made regular company-wide calls with them a painful chore as we listened to VPs pat themselves on the back for 'improving' the company, teasing new work from contracts that never materialized, and touting the exponential growth of the company under their leadership - growth that has completely imploded as evidenced by ongoing rounds of layoffs.
Tilson performed both engineering and construction services for one particular client, with the two services operating as separate divisions. Going off of recent reviews here from former construction workers and local news reports of mounting complaints from residents about the quality of fiber work, it seems the construction division was a complete dumpster fire. Yet on the engineering side, these issues were constantly downplayed by our managers and higher leaders, with assurances given that the client was happy with our work, that our jobs were safe despite work stoppages in construction meaning work also had to cease on the engineering side. That our jobs were safe was a point repeatedly stressed by our leaders over and over again and, as it turns out, it was a complete lie because Tilson just lost that big client and I was suddenly and abruptly laid off with no warning or advance notice. I just woke up to find I'd been locked out of all my work accounts before receiving a short call from HR that I was out of a job. I wonder how the VPs and CEO will spin the loss of that huge client into a success story at the next all-hands meeting.
The pay was below average, as others have stated here, and I had to wait four months to receive my first annual raise due to changes and constant delays in the annual review process. It breaks my heart because I genuinely loved working here. I loved my teammates and my manager; they were all a talented, friendly, and great bunch and we were bound to do great things. I'm disgusted with the impersonal and sudden way I was let go. It only took little more than a year for everything to completely go down the drain. It's obvious to me now that leadership bit way more off than they could chew, that the writing has been on the wall for months, and it's cost Tilson a huge contract and me and countless others their jobs.
