Pros
Good hours for work–life balance; no expectation of overtime in early-career roles. • Good enough pay for London (~£44k before tax) — enough to live decently and save some money as a single person renting a room. • Flexible hybrid working policy (officially 3 days/week in the office, but teams have some autonomy is how often they come in, and sometimes come in 1 or 2 days less). • Opportunity to rotate across teams early in your career, which helps you experience different management styles and team cultures. This provides good insight into what kind of environment you thrive in.
Cons
1. Senior engineers don’t always have the time or incentive to mentor or pair-program, so you often need to self-learn outside work to progress technically. 2. The company’s diversity, equity, and inclusion policies are applied unevenly in favour of some groups and to the disadvantage of other groups. Some employees feel this unfair but don't feel safe speaking up, though this is common across many large organisations. 3. Technical Program Managers often focus on events that can feel unproductive, with a tendency toward overly optimistic corporate communication rather than practical direction. The hackathon is not really a hackathon unfortunately because you cannot experiment with your own ideas.