Ably Reviews

Pros

Company is an open and friendly place to work. Product works well and customers are interesting. Very much trying to be a great place to work

Cons

Deeply technical to the point of being difficult to get to right commercial people. Growing fast so can be a bit of a blur of new faces

Pros

Ably has changed and grown a lot since I joined but the entire time it has kept its culture and values. The work can be fast paced and often changing, but it offers a chance to learn something new every day and to improve your skills. We're given the space to direct our own work, partly through the necessity of being a startup, but we're also given a huge amount of support by management. My colleagues at Ably are all incredibly generous with their time and expertise, we have some genuinely brilliant engineers on our team who love to share knowledge and help the rest of the team skill up. Ably fosters a culture of openness and honesty, the C Level folks tell us what the business is doing in a weekly all hands called the 'Need to Know'. I've personally found this to be helpful in understanding the direction of the company and where my role fits within it. Over lockdown we went remote-first, but Ably have been absolutely incredible at making sure we still socialise together and have fun experiences as well as working hard. For example - they sent us all a meal kit at Christmas and an online chef course where we all cooked together over zoom. They have run all kinds of fun activites for us from pottery courses, to animal life drawing to pasta making, to drag queen karaoke, all fully remote. We do also do in-person socialising when and where it is safe, we recently took a day to go canoeing on the canal in Hackney, picking litter for a local charity.

Cons

Ably is a fast growing startup, if you're used to the pace of a big corp you're going to feel like you were picked up by a whirlwind at first.

Pros

- There are valuable colleagues: emotional intelligent, smart, experienced or all simultaneously. E.g. I was in a call with 3 people, and we had 50 years of experience in technology. People are thoughtful when needed: long term strategy, short term tactics and communication. - There are even more perks, but here are some I like: Juno (which is an app with extra perks like food delivery, apple watch, based on accumulating points), healthcare, snack budget for every friday meeting, which goes between 4 to 5pm. - There is an outgoing, friendly and dedicated people team, who are detecting any issues they find. The people team have introduced an anonymous form for people to submit further information if they have any issues. They also share resources online, and recommend/ (advocate on slack) people buy resources/ books and get them expensed. - Organised: the confluence pages are well written - Very open. Things are very transparent. Adding an anonymous Q&A in the weekly meeting.

Cons

Nothing so far to mention.

Pros

- The people working at Ably are brilliant. The company attracts a range of characters making it very easy to fit in. - A company that encourages learning and personal development. - Lots of social activities, even when everyone is working remotely. - The CEO has the drive to take Ably to unlimited heights. - Ably is actively building its own and contributing to existing developer communities. - Ably seems to attract a lot of interest from investors, which is always a good sign.

Cons

Being a start-up, Ably is still finding its way in some regards.