Avoid if Possible - Designer 1 United Utility Power Services Employee Review

Almost everyone in a management or upper-management position is two-faced, dishonest, and backstabbing. The company bleeds you dry for everything you have and then will throw you away. Management feigns admiration for your work to motivate you to work more, then refuses to acknowledge any of your accomplishments and will even go so far as to diminish them to your face while criticizing you and dehumanizing you for metrics that are out of your control, and even out of THEIR control. They claim it's not their problem that we don't brag about our accomplishments enough for them to notice (despite being DIRECTLY notified by being tagged in comments and e-mails which THEY mandated employees do) and then ignore the constant praise you get from co-workers and others in management positions. You can be a one-man-powerhouse with your hands in nearly every single department, have almost everyone in those departments come to you for advice or design sense since you show care and pride and knowledge in your work, be the star pupil and literal example whose work everyone else is told to follow, help rewrite/clarify/add to the process standards we are meant to follow, take your personal time to develop templates that go above and beyond to help your team and other teams you work alongside save time and labor, pioneer new kinds of work opportunities the office has never even dabbled in before (but your prior experience in those opportunities will be completely disregarded because upper-management doesn't like you), lead a D2 through one of those opportunities even though you are a "lowly" D1, earn praise from everybody in the entire office including those working from home or out-of-state, participate in office event coordination (events which management and upper-management seldom show up for and then are aghast that you have events committee responsibilities), show up 15-30 minutes before the office even opens single day, manage the informal office-wide coffee club all by yourself, get groomed for promotions and work-from-home opportunities they promise you and never deliver on, work on projects that are meant for D2's and D3's even though you're only paid as a D1, you can do ALL of this and they are more than excited to show you that you are nothing to them. They will flex that they are above you and that your contributions mean absolutely nothing. They love to pretend like it's so hard for them to just-so-happen to abuse every scummy opportunity "at will" employment allows them knowing that employees have absolutely no say over this, including the sudden loss of income and health benefits when they know you're receiving ongoing medical treatment. You get no warnings, just immediate termination, no two weeks' notice (but heaven FORBID you try to take ANY time off with two MONTHS' notice). They pretend to care by "allowing" questions, but provide no meaningful response because they know legally they don't have to. They lied about the situation and didn't even make sure HR was in on the lie because HR spilled the beans. The company treats you as though you have just been found guilty of war crimes at the Hague and have "security" (the physically largest and most intimidating staff members whose personalities take a complete 180° against you despite your years of kind, positive professional relationship with them) hover you, watching your every move, to escort you out of the building as though you still have fresh blood on your hands. The best part is that they seemingly reveled in doing an exodus on the onset of Hannukah, so happy holidays for us I guess. No holiday bonus, no attendance to the holiday party you contributed to arranging, nada. They would rather have work done quick and sloppy than doing it right the first time, then hold everyone to those time standards hoping that the work is "good enough" so that they can pocket more money for themselves in a horrid case of min-maxing. This provides a horrible, awful workload on the poor QA team to the point where they get severely backed-up and you don't receive meaningful feedback at all for months at a time so you don't even get the opportunity to learn from any mistakes which you will be held solely accountable for continuing to make unbeknownst to you that you were even doing anything wrong. Most people don't get to earn merit raises due to either poor quality or poor timeliness, so at least you get to pick your poison. And don't ever try to advocate for yourself by showing personal or even professional integrity, because if you don't kiss up to people who take delight in degrading you and disrespecting you at every given opportunity, you WILL be penalized. Most of those in management positions hold grudges for literal YEARS and will do EVERYTHING they can to mistreat you, undermine you, throw you under the bus, and blockade any chance you have for succeeding. In an extremely childish display, many will straight up ignore not just your e-mails and Teams messages, but your entire physical existence by pretending they don't see or hear you even if they accidentally run into you around a corner in the office because they were on their phone and not watching where they were going. Behind your back, management will trash-talk you to each other and some employees allege to having seen them use hate speech, but it all gets brushed away and dismissed as "we are friends talking to each other in a friendly manner and you were not meant to see that private communication, how dare you". My disabilities got absolutely NO considerations whatsoever even when providing proper documentation, which you are not legally required to even disclose let alone "PROVE". They wanted me to jump through hoops to try getting a provider to explicitly write every single little provision they felt I needed otherwise I would get nothing. Since that isn't exactly practical, I got nothing but empty gestures and backhanded compliments. HR does nothing for you and lies by claiming that they never received any of the MANY reports you have submitted, and management perhaps doesn't follow through on submitting reports to HR even when they're required to do so. If they do actually follow through, then HR is lying by saying they never received anything from management either. Don't you dare ever recite design standards and process standards to "show your work" because management takes it as an attack against their credibility despite failing upwards into their management positions solely because of nepotism. Blindly follow their lead and lack of direction or else you are punished. If you follow your intuition and the standards we are told to follow, you are punished. When your work gets kicked back by QA because you followed the unclear standards or the fumbled direction from supervisors as you are told to, it's still your fault and you are punished. They evade accountability like the plague, which might not be a useful euphemism anymore since their COVID prevention was essentially non-existent. There is no winning or getting ahead here, no chance of upward momentum. Very few people have ever received a promotion in my ~2.5 years of working there, and many of my favorite co-workers have left because of this, even those in upper-management. Instead of investing on maintaining consistently reliable employees, HR instead chooses to invest in employees who don't show up to work day-one. The rare employees who actually decide to show up wind up uncomfortable with management's constant mishandling of every single thing, and they leave. The rarer few are kept on only for their probationary period and then let go if they're lucky enough to even make it to the end. They waste money trying to on-board new hires for significantly less than they're worth, those hires don't show up or just leave, and then the company can't afford to keep their reliable employees on so they get rid of even more employees in a downward spiral when it would be more cost-efficient to simply maintain your current workforce. In the months following the move to the new office in May, there have been fewer and fewer employees around and the huge office began to feel like a ghost town. Employee retention is pretty bad, and everyone left in the office is stuck with the burden of taking on more and more work, yet they claim that work is unreliable and unstable. Some teams are demanded to crunch and work overtime, some teams have you doing work outside your job description and/or paygrade. Don't you ever have opinions or ideas or input or questions, no matter how much you are asked, because you will be punished or humiliated. They keep talking about having continued training for employees but have only ever done one or two sessions. They always try demanding that you do storm duty, but have constantly postponed all training for it for YEARS, and don't care that you feel unsafe due to lack of training. You're also required to buy your own EH rated boots for field work with no compensation, which can be quite expensive. They also require you to give your personal phone number to everyone inside and outside the company by attaching it to your e-mail signature, I was still receiving calls from utility companies and municipalities regarding pending work for upwards of a month after being let go. They demand you have Teams on your phone and link your work e-mail to your phone so they can always have a way to monitor you and reach you regardless of the time of day. You are expected to be completely accessible and beholden to them even during your time off. They will always try to find a way to punish you for something, even if you try to be a model employee. They don't like when employees know their rights. It's really just.. so shameful to see what this company has devolved into.