As I read the letter from the grieving mom of Anna (EY Pune), it feels so sad and devastating that the life of a girl with high ambitions and hard work is all lost due to the toxic work culture.
Workplace stress is not only due to long work hours. Toxic work culture shows up in many subtle ways too. It not only pushes the junior-level employees but also expects mid-senior level employees to get work done from the team and meet unrealistic targets.
A few incidents from the past left a deep mark and made me question if it was worth the mental anxiety and stress, although I loved my role in product management.
- When I was asked to push a designer and force a tight deadline on him to get the designs ready
- When I was questioned as a manager how I granted work-from-home permission for many days to a subordinate recovering from surgery
- When I remembered the false promises made during hiring - "We are very flexible, our employees are distributed all over the world and we encourage work from home" only to realize that after a few months, the rule was changed overnight due to the founder's sudden whims. Everyone was informed that they needed to work from the office location. People (with ailing family members) were forced to relocate from other states in a matter of weeks.
- Blatant bullying by peers with egoistic attitudes (wrote about it earlier)
- The feud among the leaders of a startup resulting in conflicting boundaries - the CEO wants a dedicated product head, whereas the business head who was driving the product initiatives so far wouldn't want to let go of his product privilege and create roadblocks in various forms to the new product person who has come onboard.
- Ethical dilemmas and compromises - data manipulation, setting a narrative in such a way that customers make purchase decisions (extending their contract, buying new product licenses, etc) from a place of fear rather than offering any real value-add.
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