Aside from the bizarre working hours, there were other factors.

Summary: Abuse and bullying by management at Sirius ‘Open Source’ caused health problems for some staff; this is no laughing matter as there can be legal ramifications

THIS series is about halfway through now. It has only been prepared for a number of weeks and more material is being added as we go along.

Speaking for myself, I never took sick leave (or time off work for illness) in my entire time in the company. The same goes for my wife. But colleagues have had different experiences. One was rushed to the hospital with COVID-19 (from which he never fully recovered) and another suffered from abuse by managers. This abuse was causing health issues, in effect harming the health of staff, as we shall show much later in this series. This is what happens when completely untrained (not merely insufficiently or improperly trained) people are assigned or entrusted to manage a company with workers who are difficult to recruit and then retain. Skilled and experienced staff is very hard to find and keep.

As a reminder, managers at Sirius aren't there for their skills but for nepotism. They posses no relevant skills and clients can notice this. Of course it can in turn lead to contract cancellations and non-renewals.

Here's the relevant part of the report:

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In later years the nepotism (to be expanded upon in the final section) became apparent. Some people were basically implicitly shielded from criticism.

For instance, one colleague was often late to the shift and did not apologise. Her partner did the same thing -- basically came online almost half an hour late without apology. This is abject disrespect for colleagues, even people who have been in the company for much longer than them. The three-way relationship involved here will be explained later.

The above examples are merely a small subset and some are based on distant but accurate recollections of a rather dark era of distress. When a conceited manager is accusing, without any actual evidence, people of "cooking" while on the job it doesn't sound like management but just an attempt to shame staff. As an aside, it was often unclear what the management itself was doing (if anything substantial at all). There was a sentiment that some management people colluded and perpetrated schemes against individual members of staff, not limited to Roy and Rianne. This often backfired. There were also examples of retaliation attempts. One common tactic, which can be witnessed outside the realm of high-tech as well, is to psychologically manipulate or assign people nonsensical things, e.g. asking then to perform totally meaningless jobs that don't yield anything at all and don't improve but rather worsen the service, encumbering staff, never to be checked by anyone (as if just to waste time). This happened in Sirius too.

The hypocrisy was not just routine; it was a new standard, e.g. reprimanding people for not picking up the phone fast enough even when there were upstream technical faults (supplier) or when Reception was far slower to pick up the phone, if at all. This sort of hypocrisy or these attempts to shame staff are akin to guilt tripping. Healthy work environments would weed out such behaviour outright. ⬆