On the Frontiers of Gaslighting Your Employees - Anonymous employee Heliolytics Employee Review

Management (both exec & Team specific) expects every employee to have the diverse and seasoned skill set of a project manager, while also openly acknowledging that this is an entry level position with presumed high turnover. As a data analyst you are both somehow micromanaged down to every minute of your day and also have little to no accountability for timelines and quality of work. Tasks above your role will be given to you with the incentive of looking good at your next annual review. You’re expected to be a self-starter willing to take on non-core tasks with little to no guidance, and success in this role (promotions, higher bonuses, raises) is about looking valuable rather than being valuable. Sloppy work is accepted (in some ways a pro, on a personal level if you’re just looking to coast on by), but at the hindrance of the team as a whole. Specifically within the Analysis Team there are concerns from analysts about the management team. Management has no previous people lead experience and as such often fail to react appropriately and in a timely manner to a variety of situations. Your mental well-being is less important than moving past a situation without any uncomfortable encounters. This can be especially difficult since the team is small, you build a relationship with your manager and then you can be left feeling unsupported when you need it most. This is probably the biggest negative regarding personnel, structure, and the organization as a whole: the CTO. Timelines and deadlines do not exist to them. The CTO is very into being the boss but not very into the actual management aspect of this kind of role. He has been continuously condescending towards employees and has failed to acknowledge his shortcomings in this role, even after they are brought to his attention. He has hoarded menial tasks (literally running a jupyter notebook) and made himself the linchpin and bottleneck of providing clients their reports. Processes in place for all employees (where to document things, how to hand tasks off, etc.) do not exist for the CTO and if you need him to do something due Friday, you’d better ask Wednesday and spoon feed all the information to him as though he cannot think critically. Because he is a part-owner of Heliolytics, questioning him is nearly impossible. From the perspective of an analyst, it seems as though the Business Development team will make any promise to any client. Project scheduling shuffles on a daily basis with “priority” work or “strategic clients” springing up regularly. It’s incredibly detrimental to team morale to be constantly shuffling. These things happen at any business in a consulting world, but it’s a worrying business model to constantly be in this state of flux. Multiple times, myself or coworkers have encountered racism, sexism, and other inappropriate office behaviour. From all levels of management there is an infuriating willingness to sweep things under the rug in an attempt to move past inappropriate remarks or actions. The weight of knowing there are problematic people that you have to work with is fully on you and your conscience, while hollow apologies are deemed enough in order to move on.