Encode Club Reviews

1. Lack of career progression For an educational company, there was a surprising lack of interest in up-skilling current staff. There are also very limited/no opportunities to use one's own initiative due to micro-management from senior leadership. I didn't feel like I was trusted with the ownership of even simple tasks. One of the potential attractions of joining this company is to expect to receive a title promotion to "Manager" after 6 months. However, this is largely a nominal shift as your tasks remain broadly the same and you do not necessarily manage other people. 2. Long hours There was an expectation to work outside of your contractual working hours and it was heavily frowned upon to leave on time. There was also an expectation to respond to messages late into the evening or on weekends. Breaks were not normally scheduled when running in-person events which could be 8-hour shifts. Overall, I was given the impression that my personal time was not respected whilst employed at this company. 3. Poor feedback loops I didn't receive consistent or valuable feedback on my work and there were not key metrics to measure performance. It felt that the number of hours that you were willing to stay in the office was valued more than providing a consistently high output of work which was demotivating. 4. Lack of Transparency The CEO does not cultivate a comfortable environment where constructive criticism is welcome. Instead, those that offer opposing points of view were usually ostracised. I also found it difficult to deal with the lack of communication between the senior management and the rest of the employees. Key decisions in the business often were not divulged until the very last moment. Given the small size of the team, it was difficult to work in rigid hierarchal structures. 5. Culture of anxiety I struggled with quite severe anxiety for the first time due to the manner in which I was spoken to by certain members of the leadership team. There was a general climate of fear amongst employees and since the company almost exclusively hired graduates, it often felt that their inexperience in the workplace was manipulated. This issue was exacerbated because there was no HR to deal with employee concerns effectively. Overall, the toxic work culture made my time here an extremely difficult environment to work in and I would urge recent graduates to consider what type of work environment best aligns with their cultural values when weighing up their options.

Many of the positives of working at Encode are overshadowed by the company culture created by the senior leadership. One of the main issues that I experienced was constant micromanagement. The leadership team (the CEO and his close associates) were more concerned with employees being constantly available than whether they were doing good work. Metrics-based or performance-based feedback was rarely given. Instead, rewards were given to those who worked overtime or responded to the senior leaders' messages quickly. Similarly, those who disagreed with senior leadership were often treated differently and denied promotion opportunities. As most of the staff was made up of fresh graduates, there was definitely a strong work ethic that was exploited by the leadership. During conference periods (often 3-4 day commitments, usually spanning over weekends), employees were not assigned breaks during their shifts (which were often 8 hours or longer). When this was collectively raised as an issue by junior staff, the feedback was dismissed as "unnecessary". Finally, it was difficult to work at Encode due to the frequent changes in company structure. The chain of command constantly changed due to people leaving the company (the turnover is very high). This resulted in confusion amongst younger staff and difficulties in long-term project planning, which will likely prevent the company from growing in the long term.