Challenging environment with poor culture and management
Pros
The people really make the place. The challenges are interesting. The pay is okay but not outstanding. New purpose-built building opening up that looks like it might be cool.
Cons
Where to start? Shambolic, a complete mess. Particularly recently. It’s like watching something burn down slowly. Systems don’t work and there’s too many of them all pulling each other, failing. The amount of money they spend on technology to help people function does not explain the amount of excel tools people create on their desktop to work around the issues. Decision-making is non-existent. The few decisions that are made tend to be based on self benefit rather than company performance which probably explains company performance. There is a great deal of pooling power around one site - most companies expand, this one seems to be contracting into one super site. It’s obviously a really high risk decision, I’m sure in the long run there’ll be consequences. There is no pipeline. There are no good ideas and when there are they tend to be shut down. Long-standing problems are never fixed because fundamentally the company is very risk adverse to the point where it will prefer to keep a problem it knows then try a solution that might not work even if the risk is small. Over the years this is cumulatively created a kind of multi tumour issue. The culture there right now is really poor, everyone’s in a low mood and most of it can be traced to temper tantrums the top CEO is making because of shareprice pressure (YoY failure) - there are elements of baby Trump, let’s just say that. It makes it a really hard place to work. As per the other comments there is less flexibility now than there used to be so if you have kids, particular if you’re a woman, then it sucks to be you. Because of American policy there is no DEI so if you’re not the right shape, size or gender, you are on the back foot, hence why female leadership is a bit thin on the ground. You’ll be lucky to get any advancement there but that’s a long-standing issue. A lot of people leave because they can’t get a promotion in 10 to 15 years - literally. Any contract you might have in place with them is a bit variably adhered to, only on their side of course, it can never be on your side. When you leave the place you really get to see the dark side, there is nothing kind or nice or even particularly professional. I didn’t leave on bad terms, but I definitely don’t want to work there again based on the last few months. Almost cruel. If you’re desperate for work then by all means, but if you’re not, there must be better options.
