Their idea was to mandate all cameras being on for every meeting because the lack of cameras is definitely why we all hate working here.
It's like I was talking to an alien, I explain the long work hours, the constant cutting of staff, ever increasing micromanagement and forced to be in a shitty office WHERE WE CAN'T EVEN GET A DESK COS ITS TOO BUSY. Constant layoffs constant breathing down our necks and never ending barrage of meetings where concerns raised for not being able to do any work during the FUCKING WORK DAY is just addressed with a shrug and inference that we should do work out of hours to make time for literal pointless self felating meetings filling up every day.
I explain how the last year was constant never ending crunch while we lose half our team to outsourcing and have to take on 10x more responsibility when we were already understaffed doing the original job. I explain how all planned upcoming work is continued crunch. How we have single people holding up massive systems solo while somehow half of the team is going off to seminars and doing literally fuck all and THEY GET PROMOTED INTO MANAGEMENT. I explain how the size of the team doing any actual real work is 10% the size of the leadership fucking swarm we have of useless idiots who pack every day with meetings just to feel useful. I explain how the answer to every single problem or blocker we face is just "work harder and longer" while they insult everyone in meetings by crying how no one gives feedback and they're "here to help"
The answer? Oh we should be turning our cameras on and put even more meetings in for forced fun sessions...........
Fucking managers
Managers promote those that are seen. They have marketing brain remember, so all they care about is branding. If they chatted with you at a seminar and you bullshit successfully they'll think of you when they shortlist promotions, not the grumpy engineer who is a buzz kill with things like "tech debt is killing us" or "we have two people who can use the backend and one just quit and the other knows we can't fire him so plays WoW classic at work all day."
OP really spent all this time being competent at their role and not on how they appear
The managers are all Patrick Bateman types
Managers: ’Apology not accepted, it’s almost as if you haven’t read any Marx nor recognize the clownfiesta inherent to capitalism. Calling into question your susitude now and placing you on a PIP’
Damn how'd you know? I feel called out
Of course I know her, she's me!"