For the last year, I worked as a data analyst as a fintech company that underpaid across the board, but particularly within the analyst team (where salaries were roughly $56-60k regardless of years of experience).
It was my first analytics job out of college, so I didn't want to complain, but the pay was below average and we weren't doing any statistical analytics, data analytics, or data science work — everything was busy work, literally not a drop of analytics was done. So many of my coworkers were frustrated and felt lied to about the job, but stayed on in the hopes of things improving.
Around February of this year, a new head of our department was hired from outside of the company. During a department meeting where this new head “Tom” introduced himself, he basically shat all over the analysts and data scientists, telling analysts there were no growth opportunities in a really condescending way (for the analysts that hoped to grow into data scientists and learn new skills, he heavily discouraged growth and basically implied that the analysts weren't smart or driven enough to learn the required skills).
In March, we had our annual reviews. People were already frustrated with this process because the annual reviews were supposed to happen last year and they just didn't, and then they were supposed to happen this January, but it kept getting pushed back until finally they happened mid March. The spread of raises for the analyst team was 4-6% and they were not distributed according to merit at all. The analysts kicked up a fuss about how these raises were not enough, especially since we're already being underpaid for the role by at least $15k, but they were told that “people who live in [our USA state] don't need to be paid more”.
Between all of the above issues happening, the analysts started leaving one after the other. I started job hunting as soon as the pitiful raises were announced and within a couple of weeks, I had found a job with a 52% pay raise, fully remote and with better benefits at a more interesting company that actually does analytics.
Between late February and when I left two weeks ago, more than 8 analysts put in their notice. The week I put in my notice, 2 other analysts (Matt and Anne) also put in their notice to leave at the end of May. I'm friendly with my former coworkers and I know at least 3 of them want to leave, but are waiting for the right opportunity.
My former company seems to be panicking about how many analysts are leaving so they offered all analysts a “marketplace adjustment” to their salaries, to make them more competitive. This “adjustment” was less than 5%.
In an utter display of petty vindictiveness, today they fired Matt and Anne rather than let them finish out their notice period through the end of May.
I've never been in a position before like this, where a company is so selfish and incompetent that they screw over an entire team to the point that most of the team has left or is trying to leave.
TL;DR: my former company is managed so poorly and underpays its people so poorly that the majority of my former team has left or is actively job hunting. In their latest display of vindictive pettiness, they fired the two employees that most recently put in their notice rather than allowing them to finish out their notice.