This is a rather long post, so I apologize in advance.
To start, I was a Design Team Manager for an unlimited graphic design service based in the US. My colleagues and I all worked for the company remotely; a huge chunk of us were located in the Philippines, while some were from India and its neighboring countries. Most of the graphic designers working for the company are outsourced from here in the Philippines, similar to a lot of unlimited graphic design services (like Design Pickle, for instance).
Just to give a little background on how all this stuff went down: Though I started out pretty well with this company and moved up pretty quickly up its ranks, I oftentimes voiced my concerns on how the graphic designers were being treated and compensated. Being a graphic designer myself, I do know how arduous design work can be so I try to do my part and make the workload easy and manageable as much as possible for my designer team. Upper management claims to listen and take such concerns to note and promise to do something about those. Although we all work full time for the company, we were considered as “freelance contractors” and despite that, we were never really given contracts to actually sign and keep as documentation; I DID see contracts being drafted, but for some reason, they never fully materialized and I didn't get to sign any of them. And because of this, we don't get a lot of benefits aside from the monthly compensation. We've repeatedly requested for some healthcare at least, which they promised they will provide to us, only to eventually give us an excuse that it's not possible due to “logistical issues”.
I've already witnessed on several occasions how cruel the company can be to dissenting opinions or perceived “poor performance” (they once implemented a structure where designers were pretty much being set up to fail and will be let go immediately if they don't hit a certain performance matrix), the last straw was when they suddenly implemented a new organizational process that pretty much screwed everyone over. Real-time communication through Slack was a privilege that was previously offered to clients with higher subscription plans. They seemed to think that it worked well with the team that handled those clients, so they decided to implement the Slack integration across ALL clients, even the Basic/Starter Plan ones. We have 2 separate shifts for day and night (to clarify, my team and I, along with a lot of our other colleagues were in the night shift, which is during the day in the Philippines), so we'd be able to operate 24/7. Because of the Slack integration, they decided to get rid of the night shift and put everyone on the day shift. Naturally, everyone who's on the night shift (myself included) spoke out about it and asked why the transition is being enforced so abruptly, with little to no time being provided to us to adjust to it. They seemed to have disregarded how it will affect the entire team, especially those with health concerns and are not amenable to work in that shift. The Operations Manager (who's Filipino herself) told us that she understands we have concerns about it and are clearly not on board with such an abrupt transition. She also foresaw that it would cause a lot of concerns, but it didn't seem that she even did anything about it to make it any easier for us. I spoke to her directly and asked if there's any possible adjustments that can be made so the new process works for everyone.
“Well, that is the process now and we are firm on that decision,” she said. “I know your concerns, but it seems that you have your mind settled on how the new process isn't good.”
I understand why they'd opt for the integration, but I'm not understanding how or why they ignored the possibility of the strain it will cause to the entire team, with pretty much the entire client base clawing at us in real-time to get their stuff done first before everyone else. It also doesn't make sense to make the Slack integration available to all clients, when it seemed to have been mostly a better fit for higher paying clients. Though they eventually delayed the transition, they eventually kicked most of us out of the company, with little to no warning. Pretty much everyone who spoke against the new process OR have expressed an intent to leave, they kicked out instead before even having a one on one conversation first to at least inform us that we're being let go.
I know what you're thinking. With such questionable actions and especially with a lack of contract, I (or anyone else in the team) should've considered leaving. That's true, and maybe we should've left as early as possible. But the thing is, and I'm not sure how it is overseas, but finding employment isn't particularly easy and most of us don't really have the luxury to suddenly quit until we're sure to find another job ASAP. I don't know how they're actually going to function when they've let go more than half of their staff and a handful of designers who actually do the actual work for them, just because they refused to actually treat us like human beings.
From what I've heard, there's only around 13 to 15 designers left, and those who were retained eventually decided to also leave. Yikes.