Employees are just numbers on a spreadsheet.
Pros
- Decent pay - Fantastic co-workers
Cons
When I was first offered the job, I saw a few red flags in the interview but I ignored them, because the team seemed happy and like I’d be able to move past it based on feedback I received from another person at the company. The way I understood the marketing team was structured was what I accepted when I said yes to the offer letter, but it appears that management intended to tighten the grip on the team as soon as I was hired, and generally over-manage everything we were doing. Even the work-from-home option, which imparted a big impression on me and eventually was the reason I accepted the job, was modified so that we could only do it 6 times a year. I had never experienced a lack of freedom to work like this before, and it came to the point where I felt as though I needed to avoid my immediate boss in order to get anything done. I’m used to completing a project, passing it onto my supervisor, and then having it reviewed quite quickly, usually in a matter of days, and then undergo a final review with the very top levels of management of the company. The process at Belden moved much more slowly. I certainly expect a few revisions, but not to this degree, and not with this level of uncertainty that a project would ever be completed. In one instance, I created 30 iterations of the same brochure over a span of months. I would also often get stuck in the cross-hairs of my boss and their supervisor, whom they never seemed to agree with. Following my acceptance of the position, I read the responsibilities and told the team that yes I could do these things, but insinuated they were below my skill-set. My responsibilities changed quite a bit day-to-day, and it was never immediately obvious what I was accountable for. We all grow to expect a changing role at any company, but this far exceeded my expectations for what I was responsible for, and crept up in ways that felt insidious, or like punishments for disagreeing or having an opinion. I was often told to speak up, but even when I did, nothing substantially changed, and I found it quite disheartening. I eventually had taken to acquiescing to things even though I knew they were factually wrong or made our team look bad, because I simply didn't want to argue anymore. I personally don’t believe in compromising on the integrity of a company's image or content just because a person is in a position of power, but there I was, knowingly producing subpar content because someone said so. More than this was everyone’s seeming acceptance and knowledge of these problems. The team suffered from intense micromanaging, and it was extremely taxing on my ability to work quickly and efficiently. I also did not enjoy the manner in which things became extremely urgent. I would be assigned something and it seemed as though I'd have to figure out if it was pressing or not. There were no due dates, but in some instances, my immediate boss will have held onto a project for days, if not weeks, and in the last minute assign it and mention it was due the next day, or in some cases, the next hour. This is the definition of manufactured anxiety, and it was completely unnecessary.