Company in culture crisis - Product Designer Appetiser Apps Employee Review

2.0
16 Dec 2024
Recommend
CEO approval
Business outlook

Pros

- Some great senior designers who can mentor you and help you improve your UX and UI skills quickly - You can work from wherever you want

Cons

- Culture feels toxic and cut-throat, one day you're in the next day you're out - No opportunities for career growth - Questionable morals when it comes to advice given to clients, very much a money over people model - Poor management with managers who are pushed to prioritise delivery over all else - Will track your computer and time, with ability to see any mouse movement and exactly what you're doing. This will be on your own computer, too. They don't provide you with any technology. - Strange obsession with reading books

Explore other reviews about Appetiser Apps

5.0
15 Jul 2021
Anonymous employee
Recommend
CEO approval
Business outlook

Pros

What I like the most working in Appetiser is their flexible work hours, full remote setup, and good projects to work on. Working on good projects really boosted my experience as a developer. The team is also very open to each other and promotes consistent improvement to individuals. Our bosses are really open to feedbacks and suggestions from the team. Which is a very healthy relationship for a company.

Cons

If you're someone based in Philippines. We don't have some of what we have got used to such as 13th & 14th month pay and a mid-year bonus.

9
1.0
1 Jun 2026
Recommend
CEO approval
Business outlook

Pros

- Work from home - Variety of projects from different industries

Cons

Cons - Where to start. The place runs like a school, except the teachers are openly disappointed in you and the report card comes every quarter with a side of "shape up or ship out." - Standards get reset constantly, and if you can't hit a moving target while blindfolded, that's apparently a you problem. - Feedback is never about the work, it's about you as a person, which is a fun new genre of professional development. Senior designers won't lift a finger to help your craft but will find the energy to quietly campaign against it. Managers are lovely to your face and busy elsewhere. You will work in a silo so deep you could store grain in it. - Workload is genuinely unhinged: 8 to 12 clients a month, which is less "design role" and more "see how many plates one human can spin before HR gets involved." Targets are unrealistic, the environment is hostile, the salary is aggressively mid, and no gear is provided. - They've also pivoted from Australia-first to Bali-first, so brace for communication that feels less like collaboration and more like a slow-motion arm wrestle across time zones. - The crown jewel: they monitor keystrokes, mouse movement, and browsing on your personal laptop, which means your performance review doubles as a true-crime documentary about your Tuesday afternoons. And whether you score well or not is beside the point. If they want you gone, the review is just paperwork. Profit comfortably outranks wellbeing. Oh, and the CEO thinks reading more books will solve all of this. It will not.

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