Pros
- They have a big push to take graduates, good for first job out of university. - They take students from all STEM subjects, which is good for non-computer science students looking to get into development. - When you get on to a client, the pay coupled with the expenses are pretty good. - You get the chance to work with some pretty big names in finance, even if it is just on a client basis.
Cons
- Completely toxic work environment. Some members of staff feel the need to belittle new starts as part of their "training". - The quality of the teaching on the "training" course for graduates is pretty bad. It mostly consists of another member of staff who has been there for a year or two skipping through a presentation that they have made as fast as possible. I feel like it would be much better if they just used online resources for the training, as opposed to creating their own resources. It would be better quality and wouldn't waste other staff members time. - This is definitely a consultancy company at heart, not a software company. There is no emphasis on writing good code or using good practices in general. Not a great place to grow as a developer, although it is a good place to stay if you want to spend your career becoming a kdb consultant. - During the training period, there is almost no feedback on new starts progress. Occasionally, the new starts are quizzed during spot questions, usually only to be told that "this is disappointing, you should know a lot more by know". - (For this bullet point, it is important to note that for this job we sometimes move to different cities for clients, and this is part of the reason that some of us applied to this job in the first place.) During the interview process, we were repeatedly told that we would not be sent anywhere that we did not want to go, but the new starts have recently been told that we will "have to have a bit of openness about where you might end up". I personally think this is pretty unacceptable as I feel that I shouldn't be expected to uproot my life and move to somewhere else just because the company struggles to get business in certain places. - The salary is bad for a software developer, even in Belfast. - The Belfast office is quite basic, and space is a problem at the moment (although, to be fair, they are trying to address this), There is no dedicated lunch area so employees just have to eat in the conference room, where there is no space still. We have to tag in and out whilst eating lunch so that there is room for others. Turn over is bad at the company, I think the above reasons go some way to explaining why this is the case. Overall I think this is an OK first job if you have just graduated, and it's quite good if you are wanting to travel, even if you might be sent somewhere you don't want to go, but I would not want to stay for more than a year.