Compare Newton Europe vs Cambridge Design Partnership BETA

Pros

The colleagues are generally phenomenal, most people are high energy, outgoing and personable which is just great to be around. Ownership and accountability from the start, lots of room for... personal growth and development. I don't think I would have gotten line management experience in the first 2 years of my career in any other job. Over time the experience of working in multiple sectors and getting a range of experiences is likely Early career lifestyle is great, gives you flexibility to be located anywhere in the UK (many grads live at home for a while to save money) and while on client sites get to enjoy the novelty of hotels and food budget. The whole company events every other week and one weekend every other month are just incredible. EDI is a big focus for the company that they're taking seriously, they know they're not great and are actively working to improve it! The company has generally done very well over the covid period and has put employee welfare and happiness as a really strong focus to drive retention while many people are working from home.

Cons

Can lead to burnout through tricky client stakeholders where change takes time and through over working yourself to stick to deadlines for an extended period of time. The travel isn't ideal when... you've got a significant other at home or generally like your own bed, this improves with seniority but travel is still the norm roughly four nights a week. Many projects can feel simple to solve but challenging to implement, which isnt quite the job many people signed up for in terms of technical challenge. Newton are a fantastic implementation consultancy, but due to the fees they charge and the guarantee of results there has recently been a lot more public sector (healthcare and defense) projects and fewer private ones, as there are very few private business problems which are high value enough that Newton has the expertise to solve. Which is a worrying trend. Promotion is rapid compared to other industries and some competitors, but it is somewhat capped such that you wont get promoted outside of a certain timeframe, meaning the motivation to go above and beyond can drop off, as you realise you're taking on more work than you have to for little reward outside of the personal stretch.

Advice to Management

Keep up the great EDI work and support through covid. There probably needs to be a bit of rebrand to avoid hiring grads with outdated promises, most projects are now much longer and the variety of... sectors isn't the norm anymore. Newton needs to decide what its growth strategy is to increase £ per day value add. Currently feels like we're driving in two directions, distinct public product & big data (though we're not snowflake/palantir and probably dont want to be!?) I'm concerned there isn't enough work out there for us to grow into without specialising; in infrastructure, many construction specialists do what we do but better already, making it a hard market to break into.