Checkatrade Reviews

2.7

38% would recommend to a friend

(341 total reviews)
avatar

Jambu Palaniappan

47% approve of CEO

41% positive business outlook

Checkatrade has an employee rating of 2.7 out of 5 stars, based on 341 company reviews on Glassdoor which indicates that most employees have an average working experience there. The Checkatrade employee rating is 30% below average for employers within the Information Technology industry (3.9 stars).

Reviews by job title

341 reviews
1.0
9 Jun 2026
Recommend
CEO approval
Business outlook

Pros

Some decent people trying to do their jobs

Cons

I was buzzing to join at first because the place looked busy and full of life, but it took about five minutes to realise it was absolute chaos behind the scenes. The place feels unrecognisable now. Nothing makes sense, teams are stretched to bits, and the atmosphere is tense from the moment you walk in. Traders are kicking off every day about rising costs and the amount of fake jobs coming through, and half the time the work does not even exist. Staff are leaving, traders are losing their heads, and you get sworn at pretty much every day which tells you everything about what it is really like working here if your job is customer facing. Management uses AI to score your behaviour and attitude on the phone, and they twist whatever it spits out into negative feedback so they can justify putting people on PIPs. It feels cold and robotic, like they want a reason to push people out rather than support them. You will never see a team leader or manager jump on the phone to deal with a customer complaint themselves. They leave all the heat to you while they sit back and avoid anything difficult. They keep talking about reason and scaling the business, but it does not feel like the demand is even there. It honestly makes you wonder if they are just buying leads from some marketing company and hoping no one notices. I have watched people get pushed to the point of mental collapse. The whole place feels like it is drifting with no plan and no one steering the ship. Turnover is through the roof, morale is nonexistent unless you’re in the upper management circles. For everyone below, the vibe is heavy from the moment you walk in. I would seriously warn any prospective candidate to think twice before joining because it is getting worse, not better. There is a reason the same roles pop up on the careers page every few months. It is a full on revolving door.

1.0
31 May 2026
Recommend
CEO approval
Business outlook

Pros

The people. Genuinely, there are some incredibly talented people in there and I can honestly say I've learnt from some of the best in the industry. I've also made real friends, although a lot of that bonding came from shared trauma over pints after work. Free lunch on Thursdays was also a nice touch.

Cons

I don't even know where to start but the thing that really pushed me and a lot of others over the edge was leadership's blind obsession with AI. So much so it literally became one of the core values. Never mind the real teething issues that needed fixing for loyal tradespeople and consumers, leadership was too busy shoving AI down everyone's throat whether it made sense or not. A flashy slide at All Hands, enough buzzwords to get the AI obsessed people nodding, and that passed for a strategy. Everything got done quickly and badly, just because someone in Leadership had a crack at it on Claude or Loveable and said it could be done. Every Google Doc you opened was riddled with AI slop, feedback clearly came from ChatGPT, and the people who'd been there a while watched the product get enshittified in real time. Then the goalposts never stopped moving. Now, to a point that's normal for a company trying to scale, I get it. But the rhythm here was just too much. Strategy changes and restructures were happening way too often. I watched heads of channels, teammates, engineers and product owners get humiliated by leadership. The lack of trust towards marketing teams was flagrant and honestly quite disrespectful. It didn't matter that we were doing a good job, in their eyes we were simply never doing enough. That gets to you after a while. A lot of us lost our confidence and any real drive to give anything to that company. (And this wasn't just new people, this happened to people who'd been there for years and were genuinely trying to stay loyal.) If your work was thorough and built for long-term impact, it got ignored. Because it wasn't easy to quantify straight away. The stuff that actually moved the needle in a meaningful way never got recognised because it didn't make for a clean slide. Only the quick wins mattered, even if they didn't really mean anything. Week after week you'd hear about someone off sick with burnout (myself included) or someone getting let go. And rather than do something about it, they'd reward working out of hours. People who stayed late got shout-outs at all-hands. The CEO joked in his Christmas party speech that Checkatrade needed everything done "yesterday." Someone printed it on a t-shirt and gave it to him for banter. The final straw for me was when a third-party agency was brought in to audit my channel. My teammates and manager wasted time and money having to disprove dangerous recommendations from AI bros who knew absolutely nothing about the trades industry or the channel they were supposed to be auditing. It was demoralising. So if you think you can handle AI hype, no substance, zero trust and lack of competence from leadership, go for it. But say goodbye to your sanity on the way in.

5.0
30 May 2026

Fast paced, great place to learn.

Anonymous employee
Recommend
CEO approval
Business outlook

Pros

Expect to learn a lot and work hard. Things can change on the fly yes, but that’s the reality of working at an agile company with big ambitions. - Top calibre of talent to work with - Strategy is communicated (more so than previous companies I’ve worked at) - Introduction of share option plan - Interesting new products If you’re expecting a laid back job, it’s probably not one for you.

Cons

None really, enjoy working here.

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Glassdoor has 358 Checkatrade reviews submitted anonymously by Checkatrade employees. Read employee reviews and ratings on Glassdoor to decide if Checkatrade is right for you.