Let me start by saying this is not my first job working from home. I've worked for several mid to large size companies as a remote employee so the actual remote component isn't an issue. However, my short-lived employment at Philips has been nothing but a big mess right from the beginning.
TLDR; There is no process or infrastructure to support remote employees. There is zero effort from
1st few weeks and on-boarding - Since most of my team and manager were located in the UK, travel was required for training and general on-boarding. For weeks prior to my first day, I kept contacting my manager and HR rep on booking flights and accommodations. It wasn't until my first day that they told me that I wasn't going to be able to travel until my 3rd week of employment. I had no equipment, and my manager was in training that entire first week.
On the second week, I finally synced up with my manager to helped set up my personal laptop to their VPN. It took a full day to get Philips IT to get this to work. When everything was finally up, I didn't have access to the code base, so I just read all the available documentation that I had access to.
Training - I was flown out to the UK for a 3-week training. The first day I get there I finally receive my work laptop with access to all the necessary drives. My manager apologized that he had to be in training that entire week and won't be able to help me and that the other team member was on vacation. Again, with no additional information than here's your laptop, we'll chat later. I had no guidance even to begin being properly onboarded. I proceeded to read and do as much as I could with learning the codebase on my own to get an understanding of everything. Week 2 I finally get to meet the other team member, but he's swamped with work that he couldn't talk to me. Not the warmest welcome. My manager's training overlapped for the second week, and by this time I was just twiddling my thumbs. Week 3 comes around and the entire team has a week-long training for a new product we needed to develop and support. When the week ended and I was ready to go back home, my manager told me that product we spent all week training for has been put on hold and it may take over a year before we pick it back up.
Back home - At this point, it's been 6 weeks in and I still haven't been assigned a single task. I finally get access to a skype group where the other developers chat. They were great in helping me get familiar with the code base and paired with them for the next several weeks on different tasks.
Six months in - I was feeling pretty good about the work that I was doing despite the rocky start. My manager had weekly team meetings and one-on-one sessions every other week. On one of our one-on-one meetings, my boss tells me that it was time for yearly evaluation in which both of us have to evaluate my performance. Of course, I thought I was doing a good job considering the positive feedback I was receiving from everyone, including my manager. My manager then checked off every single box as "needs improvement". I was stunned! It turns out that the tasks that I had been picking up and working on were for a completely different team on a completely different project management board. He then invites me to the actual project board that I was supposed to be assigned to and sure enough, 6 months behind on all of my projects. I thought this was a joke and at worst a mistake my manager made and would try to correct. Nope. I was immediately put on a "PIP" aka probation. I had 30 days to catch up on all of my work AND still deliver everything expected in the current sprints. I spoke to an HR representative over the phone and his answer to all my concerns was "This does not look good for you. This is pretty basic stuff your manager expected from you." I put in my 2 weeks notice shortly after that.
