Two years ago my company announced with much excitement that we would be starting a very lucrative partnership with Saudi Arabia. However, we’re a fairly progressive company, so this did not go over well with a good portion of the staff. As you would expect, the executives and senior management – with dollar signs in their eyes – rolled out the usual excuses such as “If we show them our culture it might improve theirs”. The project started despite these misgivings, and a team was set up within our software engineering department to carry out the work.
After the first year, it became apparent that the work was much harder than anticipated. Not only that, but rumours started circulating that people working on the project were having a miserable time. To compensate, more and more staff were pulled off their existing work and thrown into this project – some very much against their will. I know multiple people who resigned rather than be forced into this Saudi project. The cracks were starting to form.
At this time, my entire team except for me was taken to work on the Saudi project, including my team lead. I was left alone, weeks before a major release of development work my team had been writing for the past 8 months. Fortunately, I worked my ass off and managed to deliver more or less everything that was needed. I then became the team lead and over the last year managed to reform the team with new joiners – going way above what I ever thought I would be expected to do at this point in my career.
Around October of last year it came to light that – despite a year and a half of work – the contracts for this Saudi project had never been signed. At that point, myself and a few others started commenting that we fully expected Saudi Arabia to just take what we’d taught them and developed so far and run for the hills. I’m not a senior manager or executive. I never have been. But it seemed obvious to me that we were being taken for a ride.
In January, the inevitable happened. Our company asked for the contracts to be signed, and the Saudi team turned around and basically said “thanks for the two years free work”.
Ironically, many people in the company were happy to be coming back to their old projects, having been massively overworked for up to two years.
Given everything I’ve gone through, I’m expecting a very good performance review this year. Given everything people on the project went through, they should also expect very good performance reviews – it’s not their fault they got forced to work their butts off only for the rug to be pulled out from under them. Our performance review factors into our annual bonus scheme.
However, the pot of money available for bonuses is determined by a set of company wide targets. These are set by the executives, and despite their insistence that they’re controlled by how well we all work together, they’re really only achievable if the senior managers run the company effectively. Despite the team working on the Saudi project only being around 5% of our total staff, the executives pinned this project as one of the main company goals.
And that’s why, on the last days of the financial year, we’ve heard through rumours that the bonus has been cancelled. Every single staff member – from reception to HR to engineer – won’t get a bonus this year because the senior managers forgot to sign a contract.