It could have been great - Anonymous employee CloudFactory Employee Review

2.0
2 Apr 2020
Anonymous employee
Recommend
CEO approval
Business outlook

Pros

I met some really wonderful people during my time at CloudFactory. It's telling that many of them are no longer there. The work/life balance was great. They had this part of the culture right. Office snacks were available and the weekly lunch was generally nice and a good time to mingle with the rest of the office. A weekly "team time" where you met up with colleagues outside of your immediate functional team was a really nice way to explore and discuss a variety of issues. Sadly this rather went off the rails when CloudFactory started using the time to hype a business model.

Cons

At the highest exec level, CloudFactory is run by at least one person who regards clients as an inconvenient necessity. This was emphatically spelled out to me in person early on (there was really, really, no room for doubt). It has not escaped the attention of staff in general that those who question this person end up finding the door. CloudFactory's mission is laudable in itself, but it is sad that the end seems to justify the means. Everyone except the cloud workers can go hang, and they are so chaotically managed that one sacked for theft from one team can subsequently be found working on another team. It seems incredible that in all the years it's been going (it's no start up, it's been going quite a few years) CloudFactory has no effective means of tracking the workers who process clients' data. Be aware that, in the UK, you have no claim against unfair dismissal until you've served two years. CloudFactory knows and uses this (whilst announcing firings as a mutual decision). Forget probation periods, it's the two years you need to aim for. If you want to get to this point, I suggest you keep your head down, say yes to everything from the leadership, and never try to suggest better ways of doing things (and there are many things indeed that could be done better). They have got by for too many years with an appalling lack of business process on the delivery side. Too much knowledge is held just in people's heads and across countless ad-hoc spreadsheets. No one has a clear picture of the overall business status. The leadership has shown no interest in fixing this. This makes everyone's job harder. With the latest funding round and new investors as of November 2019, this may improve. I can only hope so for the sake of the good people still working at CloudFactory and the worthy mission of bringing meaningful work to disadvantaged regions. The UK office was set up in 2018 as the global HQ, but all key roles in the UK suddenly either were exited the company or relocated back to America. Senior leadership simply could not be honest and open about sackings to the rest of the company, with different groups being taken aside and told slightly different things, or even nothing at all. Never before has "mutual decision" been such an overused euphemism. The UK office is now essentially just a registered company address and EMEA sales office. When interpreting other Glassdoor reviews, be very careful to distinguish between reviews from Cloud Workers and core staff (and by location). Reviews are highly skewed by those from Cloud Workers, not core full-time staff. Just beware, if you're considering a position with CloudFactory, go in with your eyes open; they may have great sounding principles, but don't assume they'll be applied to you, or consistently, or at all. You may really get on with your potential new manager, but ask yourself what your position would look like if that manager were to suddenly disappear (as they have).

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CloudFactory Response
6y
Thank you for your candid feedback. We really appreciate you taking the time to share things we can learn from your experience with us. Thank you as well for noticing that, though we have things we do need to improve on, we do have wonderful people and a strong culture. We’re so glad you enjoyed “team time”! It is a powerful time to get to know other colleagues and grow as people together. Building relationships and personal and professional growth is something we’re strongly committed to as you know. We genuinely wish you had had a more positive experience with us, and it does sadden us that you feel this way. We are sorry you didn’t have a better time here. We will absolutely reflect on the circumstances and take ownership for the things that we did that could have been done better. . We do appreciate it is difficult to accept when structures change and roles become redundant as a result, but we do accept that there may have been a better way to handle this. We strongly disagree with your comments around client processes and data, and our delivery and engineering teams will take offence to the hard work that they are doing in this regard. . We do deeply care about our clients and are always looking for ways to enhance our service. We are continuing to make upgrades to our platforms and since you have left have released a number of improvements. We are well on our way to an ISO 9001 accreditation, which we hope to get shortly. The Reading office and UK team remains a key part of the CloudFactory community with both sales and other key roles based here. The UK team has members from every function represented and this brings significant advantages. In many ways, it is the gathering place for the business. Our Principles are definitely what help guide us, and we do need to continually reread and assess ourselves against them.. We do care, and we promise to continually try to do better to love and serve our employees, clients, and communities. We genuinely hope you are able to move on from your experience at CloudFactory. We are thankful for the time that we had you with us on our journey to help 1 million people in developing nations to digitally work their way out of poverty and become leaders worth following in their communities.

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