The Basics
1. Compensation
- Low, Non-Competitive Salary
- No Sick days - you must use vacation
- Minimal Discount *
- Basic Health / Dental *
* Better than nothing, but this hardly compares to what you will live with by working here.
2. Runs like a factory
- Long hours with no flexibility: 9-6, unpaid lunch, 15 min break that you *must* take at 4pm sharp or lose it. You are required to sign in and out, and deducts pay. For hourly positions this makes sense, however what’s the point of being salaried if there’s no room for even a little bit of flexibility.
- Only pays attention ‘early’ exits / late ‘entrance, but doesn’t give recognition to the fact that there would be stretches of days where you’ve stayed really late and despite that your deliverables are done on time. Approach to attendance goes to show again how the company sees you, nothing more than a cost / labour.
- Doesn’t value employees as a resource to be invested in. Treats employees as nothing more than labour. I understand using attendance as a measure for performance review, but solely equating productivity with attendance is just naive. You have incompetent people sitting at their desk doing nothing to rack up time, while someone who’s done amazing work is frowned upon by leaving 10 minutes early? There is no trust in employees to be professional and opt to enslave them instead and cause unnecessary frustration and demotivation.
As A Work Place
1. Poor culture
- Most people are socially challenged. People will literally go out of their way to avoid eye contact when you pass by them just so you can’t say hi. It’s easy to fall isolated especially when you are new. For some reason onboarding only consists of telling people where the groups sit, and do not introduce people.
- There’s only really a handful of people that aren’t socially challenged and that number never grows because they all leave eventually.
- There is no sense of camaraderie, no team work, especially between departments and group. There’s a lot of blame shifting, antagonizing, and borderline toxic.
- The poor communication and disorganization is unreal.
2. Unprofessional
- I think it’s a basic and common workplace courtesy to speak a language (English, especially given where we are geographically) that everybody at the table can understand, especially when it’s about work. I have experienced this personally, where I’ve sat in meetings where people would speak chinese about the work on to the side. I think it’s rude, though my experience is not that bad compared to others. I have personally witnessed a group with one non-chinese member conduct a meeting in full chinese for the entirety of it. I don’t think it’s out of malice but it is just plain rude regardless and just goes to show how poor the workplace culture is when something this basic has been normalized.
- Improper communication. It seems there’s a lot of difficulty understanding one another. I can’t say if that’s simply because of the language barrier or poor interpersonal skills or both, but it’s honestly just poor communication all around.
3. Low Morale
- General sense of hopelessness. There are three types of people at CC. Complacent sycophants, those willing to settle, and normal people who leave asap. Ultimately everyone feels the same way. Even the most positively bright, inspired and motivated individuals with great ideas wilt and burn out almost immediately.
- There’s a sense of stubbornness and reluctance that honestly gives the impression that things will never change. There’s a desire to improve, but there’s no planning, no investment in talent, and refusal to take proper steps to achieve the results. The worst part is they wonder afterwards why things aren't going well.
4. Stingy
- It’s almost hilarious how cheap this company is. Underpay and noncompetitive salary isn’t the only indication.
- I’ve witnessed ridiculous reluctance to expense that's a ‘normal’ cost and well within reason of projects. Travel/Parking/Mileage/Accommodation for off site work, Tools/Software/Service/Resources that make work easy and efficient, Basic office supplies
- The reimbursement policy document is a good read. Full of hilarious gems, my favourite being where it plain states that if you need to travel by plane, you must look for discounts and book ahead of time.
5. Poor Work/Life Balance
- There’s no flexibility and honestly this place will suck the life out of you. There are a lot of stress and burden associated with any position and it’s not even because the work is hard. It’s because of the unnecessary burdens of poor planning, inefficiency and poor teamwork. Simple tasks are made complicated and more difficult for no reason.
High Turn Over Rate
If it isn’t obvious enough already, the turnover rate is high. If you’re not convinced yet, here are examples why.
1. Poor Communication and Lack of Transparency
- Poor communication throughout. In my personal experience the first red flag was prior to my first day when I asked for details regarding my first day (parking info/who to look for/ what time) and got no reply. I almost came in at the wrong time because the information on their site was inaccurate at the time. I got specific parking instructions for the interview but no instructions for my first day so I parked on the visitors parking again (i didn’t know if the parking was paid or assigned for employees or whatever the situation was, I wasn’t informed.) and then got scolded for parking there.
- Hard to work with other departments, as well as within your immediate team sometimes. There is no project management, no established process. I honestly just can’t stress how poor communication is.
2. Poor Management / Incompetent employees
- People in management positions have zero people and leadership skills - and this one cascades from the very top.
- Promoting incompetent individuals who can’t lead into management positions. Some nepotism. There is the continued hiring of incompetent employees and employee misalignment. They continually move employees to different positions they aren’t qualified for.
- Reluctant to improve process. They want to put some in place but they themselves don’t follow and everything is an exception.
3. No professional development
- Attempts at innovations are suppressed. It’s hard to introduced contemporary technology and methods. Very reluctant to change and people are stuck in their old ways.
- You don’t learn anything new. Poor infrastructure that causes most time and effort to be focused on maintaining and fixing rather than creating a solid foundation that would allow you to innovate and build more.
Bottomline
Imagine a little hut with a potent business that grew rapidly. To keep pace with that growth, they built on top of this little hut, adding more floors, more rooms, more sections, and the next minute you have a massive structure standing on four wooden legs. This is Canada Computers.
The current structure doesn’t support how massive the company has become. There is no foundation to streamline efficiency with workflows and establish a functional workplace. This is reflected in every department.
I believe there is awareness (on some level) of what’s wrong, and the ceo is willing to listen on a good day, which makes some of the decisions even more baffling. There are no shortage of ideas at CC and I’m sure there’s a vision. Where it falls apart is the execution and here’s probably why:
1. Zero planning. You can have a great vision but how can you expect to achieve it without laying down a plan or any strategic roadmap, or giving your employees the tools they need to succeed? He expects results right away and is reluctant to take the proper steps to achieve success because he thinks it’s a waste of time. It’s like not measuring a piece of wood before cutting it then wondering why it doesn’t fit afterwards. Then having to redo the job and then wondering why it’s taking so long. The tunnel vision and lack of foresight is evident time and time again as there doesn’t seem to be any assessment or regard for consequences.
2. Micromanager. He doesn’t trust his department heads and needs to have his hand in everything. Everything needs his approval. Given that he’s always travelling and he’s dealing with a million things at once, you can imagine how efficient things are. (Hint: Not very). He needs to hire competent people that he can trust. But the company is not attractive to competent people and there’s no effort to retain talent. One solution would be to make actually working here attractive to competent talent by offering appropriate compensation. But you know, that makes too much sense, just continue to hire people with the lowest salary expectation.
3. Illogical Expectation. Another instance of that mistrust is his dictatorial approach to problems. You will get ordered to do things that make zero sense and that’s because his solution to problems is one that pops up in his head. Tasks are assigned without explanation instead of approaching groups/individuals who are experts in the field and opening up the discussion to come up with a solution. There’s heavy tunnel vision and gross disregard for consequences and implications of actions.
I almost feel like a broken record. The repetition is just an indication of what is so frustrating about working at this place. Many share this sentiment. Like I said, if you are new to the scene and just need some form of experience to put on your resume, maybe this could be something to suffer through. But if honestly there are better opportunities out there and you shouldn’t settle.
