Some middle managers need management training is the nicest way I can put it. They berate and humiliate employees, in PUBLIC. If you're going to harass your employees, at least close the office door or NOT do it at their cube. Optimistic case: managers are unaware of the hostile work environment they're creating for employees. I can attest that it is incredibly stressful just hearing the conversation even though I am not the one being chastised. Worst case: I am 100% confident (confidence is subjective) IF someone were to sue (not that I would), they would win against the managers. Luckily, these managers are few and far between. But it only takes one bad apple, so the saying goes.
Also, understand your primary role is to manage the team and the process.
Commonly, there are days where I want to call in sick or straight quit because I'd rather be useless garbage at home than go to work. As reference, I rarely, if ever, felt this way at my last job.
As if the above wasn't bad enough, now we move on to the meat of the review, and the main reason why I am writing this review:
I think the best way to showcase IDEMIA culture is its response to the COVID-19 pandemic. While tech companies around the nation were voluntarily asking workers to work remote, IDEMIA had all its workers work at their offices until the state required all non-essential workers to work from home.
And while the state started slowly loosening work from home mandates, a second spike in the virus occurred. Instead of continuing the work from home policy, IDEMIA has deemed it safe enough for workers to return to the office. IDEMIA believed workers WANT TO return to work because yes, no one in the company is worried about getting their families sick, no one is worried about not having child care because schools continue to be closed. While the official policy states you may request an exemption if your child requires care, the de facto understanding is that your job comes first and your request WILL BE DENIED.
I have zero clue why a massive technology company is incapable of supporting work from home until the pandemic has passed. Many people don’t mind working in the office, but people do mind getting sick, getting their friends and family sick. Have you seen the office hygiene? There are people who don’t wash their hands after using the restroom! And now you expect them to be model citizens of hygiene? What a joke. Their pitiful excuse is that not all workers are able to work remote, so it would be unfair to those workers. While this may be true, would it not be safer to have those who could work remote, work remote, as to reduce the number of person-to-person interactions within the office? Thereby increasing the safety of people who actually have to go in?
Lastly, when the pandemic first hit, the company required all employees to exercise a high percentage of their hard earned PTO as a cost cutting exercise to prevent layoffs. A week after the deadline to exercise said PTO passed, layoffs happened anyway! When an employee separates from the company, the company is required to pay out all earned PTO. Perhaps we can give IDEMIA the benefit of the doubt in this exercise, and that the company really did do a poor job of forecasting financials, but the timing of the layoffs is SUSPECT AT BEST.
Make no mistake, working at IDEMIA, you are simply a cog in the big corporate machine. While the machine operates well, you will be taken care of, but none of us should be under the illusion that this is a great place to work.
And whoever reading this would be amiss to assume the pandemic is a one-time thing. How a company treats you in one pandemic is how they're going to treat when the going gets tough.
