Pros
- Potentially a good brand on CV but this depends on your line of work. Some divisions are well-known and respected, while other divisions are not at all. - Interesting projects- sometimes the company has to scrape the bottom of the barrel for work and consequently lands work that others don’t want but which are actually interesting and challenging. - Some of the colleagues I worked with were friendly and helpful- but this is more due to a “we’re-all-in-the-same-boat” mentality. I made good friends.
Cons
- Very poor communication between management, divisions, and colleagues. A colleague told me “here you have to read between the lines”. I had no idea where the company was heading, due to little communication between the senior management and the worker soldiers. - Very poor management, with people management skills completely lacking in my division. - A complete disregard for performance management. Performance reviews delayed by almost three months despite attempts from our side to get meetings with manager set up. Very vague goals and feedback. The delay in performance review is what made me leave. - A disinterested HR. Many administrative mistakes were made when I joined. - Support services are over-stretched, although I have a lot of respect for IT who work with little resources in a huge company. New starts, including at director-level, had to wait days or even weeks for their laptops to arrive and phones to be set-up, and then when they finally arrived log-ins also didn't work. Invoices got lost and took months to find, if at all. - Little training provided. It seems only graduates benefit from structured guidance- the rest work in the cold and woe betide you if you get it wrong, especially when it comes to working out the maze that is the "system". - Very bureaucratic and outdated systems that waste time. What little training on how to use the system exists is very vague and unhelpful. - Promotion is based on tenure and your friendship with your manager and not actual performance. Team-members are not treated equally. An excessive competitive culture exists which is worse when project work dries up. - Poor client relationships (in my division at least), clients refused to pay us, claiming we did not do the work set out in the scope. This was all due to bad project management and happened more than twice. - Several colleagues experienced issues with their expenses taking months before being processed and rebated. Some contractors working in my division were also not being paid for months. Hope this has been resolved. - Pay is below average, just 20 days leave (other competitors in the UK offer 25) and benefits package is nothing special.