In direct sales, the micromanagement has become pretty intense. They clearly don't trust us at all to run our day to day. I'm remote, but I feel like I constantly have people breathing down my neck and looking over my shoulder. They might think "well if you are doing your job you have nothing to worry about." But the mindset of having someone looking over your shoulder is just as real as if we were in the office and it was physically happening. I don't know about you, but I'm not going to do my best work when I feel like I'm being watched, judged for how I'm spending my time, evaluated every minute of the day.
As a parent of young children, I need flexibility which is why I started working at HubSpot. I've been working in this field for a long time so I like to think I know what I'm doing and how to schedule my day for productivity. The random same-day meeting invites might be fine for someone that doesn't have a ton of duties outside of work. But I schedule my day so that I can be productive around my other responsibilities. One of our core tenets is being adaptable. But 'adaptable' has its limits... at some point being required to pivot my priorities (at least 3 days a week) due to same day meeting invite whiplash starts to just get frustrating and feels chaotic.
The end of month push can be pretty outrageous depending on how far off we are from our number. "Solving for the customer" might exist in weeks 1 and 2 of the month, but as soon as the panic sets in it gets cast away REAL quick. The middle management team is willing to sour any once good prospect relationships to secure a deal on their timeline, not the customer's and they will pressure you as their subordinate to do so citing 'this is how we sell, this is why we win'.
