Gather round and listen to this sad but true story.
Once upon a time not long ago, there was a product development team at Skello who was highly committed and motivated. They'd believe in the company and pour in their best of their abilities as professionals at anything they'd be put in front of.
However, after months of great work synergy, the team fell apart. Members started losing interest and eventually left.
"Oh no! Why did this happen?", you may ask?
- Skello's direction being incredibly jealous and stubborn about their policy to work from the office. They've kept taking WFH days away 'til reducing them to just one—only because they legally can't take them all away without having to pay people quitting because of this, otherwise the feeling is that they would do so. The feeling a worker gets from this is that direction treats them as small kids that need to be told what's best for them to reach their best potential; that direction needs to feel in control by having their people around in a physical space; that they doesn't trust their employees, and by extension, their own hiring process nor their performance metrics—surprise, they're super jealous of those metrics, too, and the pressure an employee gets from this is high.
- HR efforts are put into being the watchdog of these policies. They literally reach out to workers to check in when they believe they're not following the working location rules. The feeling a worker gets from the HR department is that they protect the company *from* Human Resources and not the actual Human Resources. Whenever a friction comes up with things like these between you and the company, expect HR to rear its ugly head and leverage the law and the strategic, purposeful ambiguities of your contract against you. Direction seems to be OK with HR time and effort being spent in things that add no product value, like these.
- feeling helpless because management can't change a thing about this. If you joined Skello recently, please be aware of this.
- series of situations —micro-aggressions, you may call— in which your needs as a human being are the least priority to the company; they come first. As an example, expect resistance and having to really prove it if you need sick leave.
If you are considering joining them, think twice, since you might want to go somewhere else to be treated as a professional.