Annoying things:
- Kitchen is small and it can host around 10 people at once, meaning the rest 50-70 people have to eat at their desks or grab lunch outside of the office (however please note that this is a very common issue with most of the London’s offices)
- You must tag in/tag out at the office door’s entry (for example: if you forget to tag out on your way out in case someone was holding doors for you - you will not be able to tag in and will be forced to wait for someone to let you in and vice-versa). I do understand that this was integrated for a security reasons, however the doors entry current infrastructure could be more user-friendly.
- Meeting rooms do not have a good sound isolation, which means you can hear someone talking if you are passing or sitting next to one of the meeting rooms.
Cons:
Oh, where should I begin…
- Hight turnover of employees even if the company declares growing its numbers (please continue reading as I will explain reasons why)
- Recruitment process, it really depends on your applied position, but make sure before accepting job offer - you will know on what solution you will be working on, you will meet your team lead, product manager and reporting manager. There are multiple stories where employees didn’t pass their 6 months probation period just because there was a bad cultural fit within the team (Unless you are underpaid in the first place or the team already lacking of the available resources to do the job. In this case they will extend your probation period or put you on the performance improvement plan (known as PIP)). I wish I’m joking right know, but I’m afraid I’m not. Of course, company will defend themselves as those employees didn’t perform well or didn’t show wanted results.. However, this just verifies that company is really bad at recruiting good/successful candidates.
- Onboarding process, yes company will provide you with the two weeks training on the in-house build software. However the received training (which is actually done by a really good coach!), is just an intro to the software and given example cases are nothing related to your actual future job tasks. Also, don’t forget that this is Financial Services Company and you will need to learn Finance basics. You will be fine if you are already coming form Finance background, however what I know - job gets very repetitive and those people are usually leaving company within 1-2 years after realising is not much else you can do within a company. For those who have an IT background, you will need to learn Finance by yourself (ad hoc/on the go, so to speak) by referring to an official documentation of the solution or/and third-party sources. There is no official training or certification in Finance knowledge used within company/provided services. Meaning, you have to gain Finance knowledge on your spare/free time on your own. Advise: if you are not into Finance - don’t waste your career in Financial Services, unless all you care about is money.
- Business as usual: if you have been interviewed for a technical position where you have been asked to complete SQL test. Let’s just say, whatever you did on that test, in your actual job you will need to know maximum of 5% of that test technical exposure. In other words, technical side of the role can be done by any IT graduate after providing two weeks training to him/her. So there is a no surprise that a lot of IT people employed to the IT positions within company - leave job (again) within 1-2 years as they are not technically challenged and forced to use GUI of the in-house software where is all about clicking buttons and manually entering values/parameters without possibility to automate it (there is a scripting team to do some kind of automation to the projects/solutions, but it’s another long story.. and it usually takes them months or even a year to do so)
- Team Leadership, I will not go in details but there are team leaders who should never be as them and even worse - is not just a one case, there are few cases.. There is a big difference between person who is really good at his/her job and person who has a social and people skills to motivate and encourage the team spirit and individuals independently. On top of that, you have people responsible for leading teams or let’s say being responsible for them, while those people are contractors in the company. So how can you expect those people care about others in the first place?
- Internal Support and Development is outsourced, meaning you will not have any influence in your daily used in-house software. Any changes (bug fixes/feature integrations) to the software takes not weeks but months and current migration and deployment process(es) are very time-consuming and “ugly” as it can get.
I could carry on and on, but I think I made a point here by now. I’m not saying is the worst company to work in London, believe me there are worse (actually, that’s why I’m giving two stars instead of one). However, I’m giving you a little intro to AxiomSL and what to expect as I have ignored bad glassdoor reviews when I joined company myself.
A side note: if you are an introvert, care about yourself mostly and want to have a nice job title with a quite good starting salary OR you are person who wants to settle down with the “job for life” - you will be just fine at AxiomSL.
