From July 2007 – October 2019, I was the controller of, a mid-sized IT consulting company that was acquired by Apex Systems in October 2019. One of the promises that the CEO of ASGN (the holding company of Apex Systems) made to the employees of my company was that everyone would become an employee of Apex and would get to keep their job and their salary.
I spent December 2019 – March 2020 helping transition our company's accounting to Apex’s accounting. During this period, I tried several times to get in touch with Apex management to find out what my new job title and responsibilities would be but never heard back from anyone. Finally, in mid-March 2020, the consulting services billing department got in touch with me and said that since I had many years of experience invoicing the clients from the book of business that Apex just acquired that they urgently needed me to work with them.
Since I had already spent months getting the runaround from Apex about my job title, and since so many people around me were losing their jobs due to the pandemic, I was grateful to finally have a job title and took the position. However, I never received a proper onboarding, nobody provided me with a formal description of the job role (including years of experience required), and there was no discussion about my compensation – all things that someone applying for a new job at Apex would have received. All I knew is that I would get to keep the compensation that I had earned at my previous employer.
I spent the next 15 months going over and above the call of duty in my position. Beyond excelling in the regular duties of my job, I built several processes that directly improved the company’s bottom line. My supervisors gave me stellar reviews, and project managers frequently commented that the work that I was doing far exceeded their expectations.
However, in spite of the outstanding work that I provided Apex Systems and the praise that I received, I didn’t see any of my efforts translate into a promotion or a salary increase. I received a small standard of living increase in December 2020 but nothing else. When I never received a performance bonus that was promised to the entire billing department, I contacted my supervisors and asked to discuss my compensation.
During this meeting, my supervisors informed me that Apex needed to adjust my salary to fit more in line with a senior biller of the CSV billing team and that my new pay rate would be 40% reduction of my salary and would be effective in 10 days.
There were no prior warnings about any of this coming, and I believe that had I not said anything about my bonus that nobody would have cut my pay like this. Regardless of what Apex’s intention were, this news completely blindsided me and put me and my family in an extreme financial bind. One of the worst parts of this experience was learning that the job in which I was working for the past 15 months is an entry-level position for someone with 1 – 2 years of experience, not a job for someone like me who had by that point racked up 18 years of experience in high-level accounting. I feel like I had been duped.
I ended up having to find a new job because Apex couldn't offer me a position commensurate with my experience and salary requirements. It’s extremely disappointing to me that the whole situation with me leaving Apex could have easily been prevented on multiple occasions. Not only did Apex fail to communicate effectively with me, but it showed extreme disrespect for the value that I brought to the company.
What I learned from my experience is that Apex would rather save a few dollars than invest in the quality of its product and the careers of its workforce. It wanted my previous company's book of business but didn’t care anything about its people or culture of transparency and honesty.
Companies that operate like Apex might make a lot of short-term gains, but they do it at the expense of their most valuable employees. My question to you is: do you really want to work for a company that cares more about profit than people?
