I just need to write it down somewhere, I am sorry for people that feel uncomfortable with the statement I am about to write.
Context:
I have been working for a big tech company for the past 5 years as an consultor/engineer. I cannot share more details than this unfortunately...
I don't come from a corporate background. I have always done face to face jobs before landing this role. I've worked as a waiter, selling stuff, I have worked as a Manager on a supermarket for a few years. I am 32 and I started working when I was 16. I have done a few things. Never stopped working more than a month of my life since then (only with covid lockdown was more than that)
I love working, I am not lazy. I used to be a very active and proactive person. I used to like movement, learning new things, going places... not anymore.
The first 2 years of my life in corporate/tech world were great, I learned a lot, every day was exciting, I stayed everyday more time and I was happy to do it. I went home and still studied about the technology I work with.
After 2 years the company I worked for was bought by a bigger fish and they changed all the management chain, a new dude came in to look after the team and he promoted 3 new managers to help him.
I don't know where to start but I will try my best:
Nepotism is everywhere:
Of course, those managers were not selected based on any open/transparent process. One of those managers is his girlfriend, another one is one dude who is amazing at making himself look busy and the last one I have nothing good or bad to talk about, she is just useless.
These guys made a very close circle. People who grabs coffee with them, smile at them or goes for a drink after work with them will have an easy life. People who focus on their work and don't want to participate in any event or whatever bs they want to make or bring up will be the enemy. I could give 100 examples but I think you can get the idea.
Promotions are tied to pretending, fake smiles, stealing somebody elses work and show it as yours. Disgusting. It is completely disgusting.
They use the work at home model as a reward, not a right:
Before this dude came in. We all worked from home. This is the contract we signed and the job offer we got. Well, he changed everything and now we have to go for 3 days every month to the office.
It is not the end of the world. The big deal about this is that they implemented a system where the metrics that you do based on your performance, customer's satisfaction, response time etc.. will determine if you can work from home or not.
Based on my metrics and performance, I can maintain the work at home but this a every month pressure that is unnecessary. I don't know if my routine will change one month to the next one if I have a couple of undesirable customers on the same month. This is the difference between going 3 days or 30. It is a very big change that does not depend on me 100%. Talking about undesirable customer, we get to next point.
We went global:
We used to work for EMEA region. Most of our customers were from the UK, Netherlands, Denmark... The farther we would get would be UAE, but this was very strange.
One day they opened borders and we started working with the rest of the world, but particularly with India. (no salary increase btw)
This is a nightmare. Indian customers and colleagues are terrible to work with. I don't care about the "some of them are". Well, in my experience they all are. This is purely the experience I got. Unfortunately, this is my reality.
They are liars and lazy. They want you to do their work. If they have any kind of power above you they will treat you like !@#. Famous sentences like: 'do the needful', 'you must do this ASAP'.. All this began with them. Never seen this before going worldwide.
There are literally job positions there that they entire job is to message us just to ask us: Are you working on this right now? When is this going to be done?
If you need any sort of technical proof or technical report, they will just use copilot.
My job right now is to argue about people who should be doing their work for the 85% of my shift. I expend all my day arguing. They are completely useless.
But of course, you will always have your managers, who instead of protecting you, they make you do what they want and remind you about the work at home reward (:
##### The point of my post #####
There are 1000 things I could add. Processes that are useless and take a lot of time to complete, unfair treatment, unfair metrics, unfair payment... I think anybody who works on corporate knows what I am talking about and this was not the point of my post.
The point of my post is that I am suffering in silence. I wake up in the morning feeling miserable. I fight to get out of bed. I have lost the ability to cry, I just don't cry anymore. I can't. I am tired, but REAL tired. Standing up right now to make a coffee is a duel inside of me that I can't even describe, it is so pathetic.
I had a music band. It is gone. I could not move to go and rehearse or to give shows anymore.
My social skills are gone. I end up so tired and I think so much about work that before I am going to speak to my girlfriend or friends I stay quiet because it is so much effort to just say a word it is not even worth it. You can imagine how the relationship with my girlfriend is going.
I want to leave this corporate bs world. AI will remove me from corporate soon enough anyway. Probably study to be a carpenter or a plumber. Something that provides value to the world.
I am so tired of working on a job that provides absolutely no value to humanity, to report to people with invented job descriptions that steal all their work from people below them and sell them as their own ideas.
If you identify as a person I am describing above, you are a snake and you are part of making somebody else's life miserable.
Thank you all for your time :)