Just coming here to vent a little while I make a transition.
In March 2020 I became unemployed from the previous company I had worked with. Over the next seven months there weren't many positions in my field due to the quarantine phase of the pandemic restricting hiring. In October 2020 I joined a startup company through a temp service At that time there were only 18 employees in the whole company that contracted with the temp service. I joined a team of four people, and we had a supervisor who was pretty hands-off because they wanted to retire and decided to join on with the company with the plan to retire in a year or two afterwards after the company started going.
The first six months were turbulent. Nothing was standardized in what we were doing work-wise. Standards changed almost every week, if not twice a week. None of us knew what we were doing until about four months in. Furthermore, due to their sunk cost mentality surrounding real estate, they wanted us to work a hybrid schedule (two days in the office, per team), but the pandemic was so bad that they had the conscience to have us stay at home for long month or two bouts during peak periods, such as the holidays. When we had to come back into the office though, many people quit. Turnover was pretty high since all of us were hired on as temp workers, and it wasn't clear that we'd be hired full-time. We also had to learn and perform in a new field (medical pricing) but were intentionally hired for our technical skills (data development) with the idea that we'd be trained in the prior over a year-span or so.
At one point I was the only employee on my team because of high-turnover and a coworker going on leave. If I quit, that team would've not existed anymore due to a lack of employees, but it was a team crucial to the success of the company — it needed to exist. Likewise, the peer team that was hired when ours was had even worse turnover problems. They also started with four people, and are currently at one person left, and only ever had about 2-3 people at any give time since the initial hiring.
After high turnover, the employer and temp agency they contracted with decided to boost the pay they'd offer to new joins. In order to retain those of us who were left, they guaranteed us that they'd hire us full-time if we were there for 6 months. Two new people joined after two had left and after a few weeks of me being the only person on my team besides the supervisor. Since my supervisor was quite hands-off, I sort of helped train them and another coworker came back from a leave of absence. So we had four people again. I got my offer and accepted. A month later I discovered that some of my coworkers were making more than I was offered, and that was with the recruiting company skimping off the top since they weren't yet full-time employees. When they were hired full-time after their six months, they made anywhere between 14% to 30% more than I did, despite having less experience and credentials. I chalked it up to my employer and the temp agency taking advantage of the fact that I was unemployed in a worse labor market and more desperate when I joined than these coworkers were when they had Still, we were suppose to get performance reviews every March, and I assumed that things would equalize a bit when those came since the company seemed pretty progressive about providing new benefits and giving more remuneration. I decided to stay because the work-life balance was great too.
Our team started to become quite productive and we all get along very well with each-other. Turnover on our team dropped to nothing, but our peer team still experienced high turnover. The company had expanded to about 50 people by September.
Everything seemed fine, until this last month. Due to the quality assurance team finally reviewing the work that we were doing for a year or so (and while we were learning medical pricing) after they didn't give us feedback for a year, our workload has increased significantly — mine has especially in particular since I was there the longest and have the most to review. It got to the point that I'd sleep five hours from 10 P.M – 3 A.M, wake up, work until 9 A.M when we'd have a meeting and then work for the rest of the day until 5 P.M relax for a few hours and then repeat. Not every day, but enough days that it wasn't healthy.
Last week we had our performance reviews. Our hands-off supervisor praised all of us and gave us the best scores she could give. I was on a decent high from the positive reinforcement, and decided to automate some of my work that night so that I could be even more productive in the future. I worked until 12 A.M (also note we are salary exempt workers) slept for 3 hours, then worked from 3 A.M until 9 A.M automating a large task that would typically take two weeks for me to accomplish, and I'd have to do this task every quarter. This automation made it so it would only take a few days to complete and the results were more readable to the quality assurance team. I was exhausted, but felt good about what I would say in the stand-up meeting that morning. I wrote a list of what I had accomplished. My supervisor's supervisor was the person who ran the Friday standup meeting which incorporated three separated but related teams. Many coworkers on all three teams said things like “I have not much to report this week, did this, did that” and the big-supervisor was fine with it. Finally, it was my turn, the big supervisor stopped me mid-way, asked why I had done what I had done, and reprimanded me for it in front of about “15 other people in the call. My immediate supervisor tried to chalk it up to a “communication problem” but was too meek to defend me beyond that. The big supervisor suggested I'd perform the task in a way that it would reduce the productivity of my coworkers, and out of obedience when I did do that task that day it had reduced the productivity of coworkers for that day since it bogged down shared resources. Since I started, this supervisor had been quite critical of me, even in the first interview. If it were up to them I probably wouldn't have gotten the job, but the other two interviewers were happy enough that I did. I thought that skepticism waned over time, but apparently not.
Also in the call the big supervisor mentioned that they along with their boss would “look in their budget to see who gets the percent increase in raise, based on how long they've worked there and our performance reviews.” I am skeptical I am going to get much more than a nominal percentage increase at this point. At best probably 8% to match inflation. So I've been applying since that meeting ended. Got an interview for yesterday, but interviewer ghosted me. Have another one for today, and it seems like a legitimate interview. Pay on job boards in my field is now about 30% – 40% more than what I am currently making and with remote work there are many more opportunities since many companies are hiring nationwide. A person on the peer team to mine left last week, bringing that team down to one person. They had been trying to find a third person for that team for months now. Now they are looking to fill two positions on that team. After I leave, they'll have to fill one for my team as well. The temp agency can't seem to find anyone. Whoever they do find will have to be retrained from scratch, and it takes about a year to learn. Hopefully this gives my coworkers the leverage to negotiate higher remuneration, but I am done waiting. The only thing that kept me here was a friendly work environment and work-life balance, and both of those are gone.