Some call it “job security” while others call it “not enough team members to complete the volume of work” .. take your pick.
There’s also a culture of management expecting employees to do more than their role.. in the SMB world, you need people to do that.. but I witnessed first-hand a great employee standing out while they were performing at peak, and then for them to be told soon after they were “not meeting expectations” because they “set the bar too high” for themselves previously.. even though during the period of time they were being reviewed for, there were plenty of data/metrics that showed the employee completing plenty of work to deserve a more fair rating.
I never had an employee review that I felt my supervisor put lots of time into. One time they picked one scenario that had constructive criticism to be upset about and used it to tarnish the whole review. The other times they said things like “we love what you’re doing, keep it up” with no growth/development opportunities for me to take away, which felt like they prepared for my review DURING my review, and not before.
If you want to work somewhere that’s very transparent about the financials of the company or why there are structural changes to how they compensate employees.. this is probably not the right place for you. They’re behind the times with competitive compensation and have been known to change/remove positive compensation programs without telling employees. I was personally told during my interviews that they did Certification Pools during some quarters and would give Christmas bonuses and I never experienced either of those during my tenure. Tough to say what the reasoning was there because they weren’t transparent with why those went away. They would share internally their Gross Profits each year, and both years I was there, they recorded record-profits.
They’ll pay for your medical premium, but when you go to use it, you’ll find out how that works out. I personally would have rather had an option to upgrade to a better plan even if it meant paying for it myself.
Lastly.. Several members of Management/Senior Leadership tend to have a defensive nature when faced with opposition and challenges. Mistakes happen and we’re all human, but in the times I tried to give constructive criticism or disagreed on something and sought conversation about it, I was met with lots of defensiveness or deflecting tactics.
