Set Up for Failure and Fired without any Regard
Pros
The benefits and standing desks were nice.
Cons
My experience at this company was probably the absolute worst of any job I’ve had. It made me lose faith in the Portland job market and led me to seek work in another part of the country. I was brought on to assist a department of only two people managing a case volume that of a medium sized law firm with no backing of any case management software. The technology provided to me was not sufficient in allowing me to do my job effectively. I needed to have multiple applications and tabs open at the same time, and my computer kept freezing and slowing down due to how much it all needed, and I had to restart my computer multiple times per day. I was told to just deal with it. This was after the first computer given to me completely shut down in the first week of the job and needed to be replaced after hours of IT trying to fix it. Training was okay but short and directions soon became contradictory. I was told to do something one way then criticized for not doing another part of the process or looking at / updating something in a specific place that wasn’t communicated to me in the first place. At one point, I followed false directions from a coworker, who was in part training me, only to be criticized for doing what I was told. When I brought up on multiple occasions that what I was being told to do wasn’t in any of my notes, I was just told to go back and fix my work and continue to do it the new way moving forward. This led to numerous days of bringing work home in the evening to fix what I had unknowingly done wrong that entire week. In addition to that, one day I was told I can pace myself to make sure I get things done the right way, and the very next day I was told I shouldn’t be taking so long on said projects. For context, the kind of work I was doing was extremely niche, and I had never done it before in any capacity. I only had experience from a parallel field with at most translatable skills. I was expected to work unpaid overtime at the drop of a hat, and my manager and single coworker were constantly working into the middle of the night to keep up with the heavy case load and constant stream of new cases. Most of the time, I came home late from the office if I didn’t have to bring anything home with me. I spent hours of my own personal time as well trying to learn the work and the internal systems so I could keep up and be efficient, but In the end I was fired with no severance for “lack of professional skills needed for the role” even though they were aware of all of my skills and experience at time of hiring. My manager didn’t even have the dignity or respect to come into the office and say it to my face. I was walked into an empty room with them on a video call just to read my termination letter word for word. Side note - I have also never experienced such a nepotistic company before. Half of the entire company are either family members or very close family friends with each other.
