Hi fellow workers of the world. I need help and advice on how to deal with an employer. Any help identifying leverage and how to use it would be amazing. It will be hard gathering all of my thoughts so I apologize for sections that may ramble.
Background: I work for a “startup” company that is an offshoot of Deloitte. The CEO’s name rhymes with… Gosh Dersin… This company has poised themselves as the one and only HR consultants to use to create an “irresistible” work experience for potential employees. Their reports preach giving your employees the best benefits and listening to their needs. After having been with the company for a while now I realize that they don’t practice what they preach whatsoever. The CEO often talks about the multi-million deals they just landed, even today said that we are a “very successful and profitable” company. However on the opposite side of the coin, much of the company is… very very senior. Old ass white people who don’t know how to open a PowerPoint. My boss has openly expressed that the whole company feels stuck in the 90’s. Some of the “research reports” the company is putting out are just blog posts passed off as “peer reviewed research”, some are just years old reports that they dust off and put a new title on.
My issue: The company of about 60 employees(founded in 2018) clearly has money available, but does not provide health benefits because “they’re still just a startup.” As i mentioned before, they are making huge price tag deals, and recently replaced two freelancers with one full time employee. I know from talking with the freelancers and new employee that just one of the freelancers was averaging $180,000/year. The new full-time employee is making $50,000 salary. On top of that, there is a company trip planned for the end of this month that some have opted out of. The company is reimbursing all travel and food expenses for each employee and a plus one, which comes out to around $2000. Why can’t employees opt out of this and elect to receive that compensation in another form?? On top of THAT, new employees need to wait a year to receive a raise… even with historic inflation, rent increases, etc. I know for a fact my boss won’t go out of her way to try and skirt this because she is a boomer and said that she had to do the same thing so why should she help me?
Sketchy shit: (1) decided to research the company a little bit to see what I can find. Very quickly found that in the past month, web traffic from Russia to the company website has increased by 2000% accounting for 60% of all website visits. Could they be paying for bot visitors to defraud investors?
(2) the company trip I mentioned above is posed as a “thank you” to all employees. There is a company meeting, a hike, and a wine tasting. It is unclear whether or not the CEO is friends with any of the business owners where we will be spending time, the hotel we will be staying at (accommodations booked by the company), if there will be any kind of tax write-offs etc. but given this is on his home-turf, it is not unreasonable to suspect.
Conclusion:
Given all of this information, I think it is warranted to say that I am indeed searching for new jobs, but after a month of searching I have come up with nothing so I am starting to go into fixer mode instead of just leaving the company without a solution. If I happen to get a job offer that can support me, I will be more aggressive with bringing this up to my boss and other senior figures in the company. So far I have only asked surface level questions to try and educate myself and see where the company and other employees are positioned.