Ok this happened around 2.5 years ago . I’m not sure if anyone’s going to read this whole story but this seems like the appropriate place to post.
TLDR: op was handled like a b*tch at the office. Salaries gets frozen and when resigned everything was possible
A little backstory: I used to work at the office of a medium sized company but with like a shitload of ‘shops’ around multiple countries in Europe. I was stationed at the tech department and was pretty much the only guy who knew how to work with a specific Fortune 500 tool. Having to work with marketing was going to be part of my daily activities.
When I signed at that particular job a lot of alarm bells should have gone off when my manager -let’s call him manager 1- at that company jokingly mentioned -immediately after signing my contract – that I shouldn’t expect to get an increase in salary in the upcoming years. Well he wasn’t joking. After leaving the company I pretty heard the same story from multiple ex colleagues.
As I was the only guy at the company who knew how to work with that assimilated Frankenstein tool I was to be included in a special team where my input was pretty much ignored but i still had to build the goddamn thing. My estimations for how many hours it would take to complete certain projects were just ignored. Let’s say if I would suggest a project needs 80h; I’d have to do it in 40h. I just told them that they should be discussing this with manager 2. So by the end of the day I was called by manager 1 (not 2) asking me to explain myself why I was so stubborn in fixing the damn project. So I just explained to home the whole thing and said that it’d be possible if we added 1 fte as projects were becoming bigger and bigger. His response? Not possible. In the end completing the project took even longer than my estimations because of fuck-ups and other shenanigans at other departments. Highlight of working in those projects was that one time that I returned from vacation and received an email from marketing prohibiting me from ever going on vacation. I should’ve printed that shit out and hang it in my home office.
So each year you get a yearly performance review. These yearly reviews were done by manager 2 – who was working under manager 1. Manager 2 was a cool guy and said that he was happy with my performance. However at a normal company you would get an increase in salary if you’d perform well. Nope not at this company. You’d get scolded if you didn’t perform enough or didn’t reached your kpi’s. Zero incentives so what was even the fucking point to perform? Luckily manager 2 agreed but yeah..his hands were tied and it seemed that this was standard in that company.
It gets better; one beautiful summer morning we received a memo of manager 1 mentioning that all salaries were to be frozen until further notice without even giving us a reason. They were really trying their best to keep up the morale! As expected manager 1 gave zero fucks about his team and made some jokes about our salaries. Do note: this was a year before COVID was booming. Shortly after I received a proposal from my current job and I didn’t have to think twice to join them. When I handed in my resignation letter manager 2 was devastated and pretty much sad because I was going to leave. Manager 1 on the other hand was firstly furious at me and even ignored me for a week before proposing my an increase in my salary or even create a new job title to keep me there. I yolo’ed the fuck out of there and enjoyed slacking off during my last 3 weeks. When I left I did hear stories from my ex colleagues of the tech team that manager 1 still was pissed at me for the next 2 months until they hired a new one for that position.
All in all I learned a lot from working at that company and I do hope that a lot of you guys notice those red flags a lot sooner than I did. Spare yourself the trouble and hassle and always be on the look for the next opportunity. You damn know you’re worth and never ever let higher ups or even colleagues fuck around with you.