Pros
There was nothing I could have considered as a significant pro in this company except maybe that you're paid well if you speak specific "scarcely found" languages.
Cons
Hiring: The “hiring” process felt like a scam, there was no interview. I had only one call with a person to check my language skills. Then, I was given an address and a time to arrive at. It was at the height of the pandemic and I didn’t expect this job to be the best opportunity anyway. First impression: When I entered the office, it was clear that the management was incredibly disorganised and unprepared. The office was dead, those who worked from the office sat silently in their cubicles and stared at their screens. Nobody cared about the new people, you are not made to feel welcome there. Team-spirit and company culture? Nada. The management: A few months in, it became clear that particularly two managers enjoyed cornering and bullying people. They consistently lied, gaslit and guilt-tripped people throughout my time there. It almost felt like a compulsion for them to do so. Word spread that they blackmailed a girl with her private life to “understand” her low KPIs. They claimed to have read her private messages. I heard her break down in the bathroom. Needless to say, this colleague was fired soon after that incident. Anyone who, for some arbitrary reason, they didn’t like, who had any valid point to make, who pointed out a mistake that they made or was just not the “right kind of person” for them, was fired. Even if their KPIs were good. Almost everyone had problems with these two managers in particular, and if someone didn’t, it was because the managers liked them or were friends with them privately. The pattern of the “likeable people” was very often incredible submissiveness, lack of boundaries, readiness to be exploited or equally abusive behaviour. I worked in an office before, I know that corporations can be horrible places at times, but personally I had very good experiences in my past. This one however, is the lowest of the low, and it’s frankly outrageous how this company can enjoy any good reputation at all. It baffles me how the managerial conduct of this company is not in the local news yet. First thing I noticed about these two managers in particular is their very unclear and childish communication style. It took a lot of time to decipher what they actually wanted in their emails and how the system actually worked. If you dared to misunderstand something, ask questions that you shouldn’t ask or make a genuine mistake, you were accused of “abusing their mercifulness/ the privileges that they had so generously bestowed upon you” or quite blatantly, of stupidity. That goes hand in hand with the fact that any responsibility for their mistakes was deflected and put on other people/entities. One of them often presented themselves as “open and fun”, they would word their requests in a way that would make them seem optional. The same person would then get angry when people didn’t understand their intentions. There are no checks and balances over these managers, there’s no entity to complain/give feedback about them to. HR seems to work with them or be submissive to their needs, not to the needs of the employees. The supervisor of these managers is kind but passive and busy with other things. If I were to describe the structure of this company I would say it’s a totalitarian regime based on arbitrariness and constant manipulation. Fear, confusion and subsequently avoidance is a very common state you’d be in under these coordinators. If you work as a Data Analyst, you’re not considered a colleague but a “grader”. A sub-entity of sorts who is told what to do and micromanaged to the core. If you speak directly to the management with suggestions/concerns/feedback, your points are all, by default, wrong or simply ignored/dismissed. You’re basically considered a Gamma/Delta (see: Brave New World) by incompetent, ethically questionable people who lack backbone and integrity, but like to consider themselves Alphas. Any power or advantage given to these managers is abused instead of being used to increase productivity or the morale of the team. You can be 100% certain that if they have the power to get away with harming you/wasting your time, they absolutely will pursue that without blinking. Can they leave you on “read” for 3h without telling you your task for the day? Yes, they absolutely can and regularly do so. Do they feel entitled to contact you at any given time for a “meeting” or a talk, without giving you notice in advance? And subsequently “punish” you if you finish work sooner? Yes, the two aforementioned managers regularly do that. Can they give you a useless task just to fill in the hours? Yes, they do that 40% of the time. The Job: If we speak about the job itself, it’s an extremely brainless job. You do the digital equivalent of sorting things in a factory/warehouse. Easy and stress-free, in theory. It can be nice because you can listen to intellectually stimulating podcasts and be on autopilot. Eventually though, you will feel that your IQ is diminishing the longer you do this job and the more time you spend being managed/surrounded by low-quality people. There are guidelines that you and everyone else have to stick to. But the reality is, that you are controlled/reviewed by people who don’t stick to these guidelines. Nobody can directly contact these reviewers. Subsequently, you get reports and are made to feel responsible for “your failures”. You are then expected to point out where the reviewers made mistakes, and create sheets of “guideline updates” yourself. Pretty useless if the guidelines are there to clarify all of these issues in the first place. Conclusion: You will feel very good in this company if you are submissive or a doormat, if you don’t value ethical conduct and are incapable of showing solidarity with colleagues. If you have little to no self-respect, do more work than you should, work inefficiently just to fill in the hours, and are naive enough to not see through the manipulation of these two managers, you’ll do absolutely great! If you don’t ask questions and are grateful for their existence, they won’t cross you. You'll also feel fantastic at the office if you're okay with being videotaped without your consent and if you think it is normal that all of your direct supervisors are white.
