Friendly international company with amazing employees and below average management - Anonymous employee Pole Star Employee Review

3.0
19 May 2017
Anonymous employee
Recommend
CEO approval
Business outlook

Pros

* proper international environment: employees half Brits, half coming from all corners of Europe and world * international business: lots of customers/representatives visiting the office from all countries * large, appealing building, with a dedicated restaurant at ground floor and lot of space to hang around with colleagues * lost of freedom in picking technologies and development strategies * very skilled people can hike the career ladder quickly

Cons

* the direction of the company is not clear to anyone * a lot of people who joined in the early days are still working in the company with relevant career progression but not enough skills compared to the role they cover * some not-so-appealing HR policies are enforced a bit too strictly: no alcohol in the office, many prefer shirts to t-shirts (a bit too corporate) * level of tech is average; not very happy to use bleeding-edge technologies, a lot of tech debt and a good amount of legacy services hanging around

Explore other reviews about Pole Star

5.0
9 Feb 2024
Recommend
CEO approval
Business outlook

Pros

The culture is fantastic. Great place to work. A startup feel with opportunity to work with AWS

Cons

Some legacy products need to be eliminated

3.0
8 Jun 2025
Anonymous employee
Recommend
CEO approval
Business outlook

Pros

Talented, mission‑focused colleagues; intriguing maritime‑intelligence and defense work; flexible global teams; supportive immediate managers; strong learning curve for anyone unfamiliar with the domain, however.

Cons

PE ownership creates a strong “quarterly EBITDA” bias. Valuation metrics dominate, and security‑modernization budgets are chronically under‑funded. Cybersecurity sat under the Defense Line of Business (LOB) with no autonomous budget or official enterprise mandate, so controls that affect non-Defense systems were regularly deferred. Compliance gaps lingered, remediation backlogs grew, monitoring coverage stayed shallow, and audit readiness slipped further behind. These structural constraints—not capability—ultimately blocked meaningful risk reduction and made the program appear ineffective.

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