The owner pays well below prevailing market salaries and often cuts agreed upon salaries after a new employee begins work. The company has been caught violating labor laws for non exempt positions, leading to audits by the Department of Labor and large restitution payments of back wages, sometimes in the five-figure range. Resignations of exempt employees are most often a result of pay and other disputes, including refusal to honor agreed upon incentive based pay and commissions. Litigation against the company is not unusual.
Intense micromanagement.
Tate Computer Systems regularly under reports sales figures and has been subject to multiple tax liens by state and local sales tax authorities in the last 10 years.
The culture does not encourage innovation and is heavily influenced by hyper vigilance of the owner which is manifest through obsessive monitoring of office area cameras.
The owner often makes overnight changes to sales and product focus priorities without any market research or supporting data. These are often products with high margins but low demand. Poor traction is always attributed to the employees, never the "ready, fire, aim" marketing approach.
The org structure is very flat...essentially the owner, his son and then everybody else. The result is nearly zero potential for upward advancement beyond an employees initial role.
These and numerous other factors result in unusually high employee turnover. This is a constant stressor on remaining staff because they must either pick up the slack after someone leaves or too frequently training a replacement in addition to their own duties.
