office politics, low pay, good learning
Pros
There was really good advice and support given at all times. After a while, some of the more helpful people left to pursue other things and the environment was less helpful, but it was still more supportive than many similar teams. They work on tried and tested, but current technologies, making growth easier than anywhere else I have worked before. I found that nearly all technology they used while I was there had good documentation and code samples, nothing was bleeding edge and nothing was totally out of date and the architects kept the place up-to-date. You do need to still work at it. I felt I remained a junior for a while, but my colleague who was always doing online courses was able to use what he learned to grow and left with a huge raise in a matter of years because of the support, consistency and openness to try new things and "spikes" or investigations into new tech.
Cons
Office politics. The management never seemed to get on. Some management wanted to try to change the way things worked with every new Youtube video. There was resistance from some teams since they didn't have time to get accustomed to a new way of working before a new change was presented. People get on better when some of the management weren't around. This often caused bad office politics, which is very tiresome. They didn't care to make reasonable adjustments for a colleague's mental health and fired him. His replacement was useless for 6 months until they gave up on the whole team and fired everyone. They have quite low pay in comparison to other places and then staff learn a lot while working there so their skill set grows far faster than their pay package. I can immediately name 3 staff that left and took a raise of around 10k from a new company. This is a combination of underpayments, but also potential learning so it's both a pro and a con. I remember them promoting someone who had only been there for a month over someone who had been there like 5 years. Choosing untested and inexperienced over someone devoted to the company. Avoid the CEO at all costs. Luckily everyone in my area was free of him for the most part, but when he was in the office people got fired on the spot for no reason. It made everyone REALLY nervous unnecessarily and caused a bad attitude.
