Encode Club Reviews

I strongly advise against working at this company due to its toxic culture and poor management practices. The CEO and his two close associates create a highly unprofessional environment, leading to employee dissatisfaction and high turnover. Here are some issues that I experienced during my time there: Lack of Constructive Feedback and Support: - No constructive feedback is provided, and employees receive little to no support for their professional development. Performance is not measured by metrics but often by the CEO’s subjective opinion of you. - Unlike other companies where quarterly reviews or 1-1s are opportunities to provide feedback, the leadership uses these sessions to dominate the conversation. Any form of criticism or feedback is unwelcome, and those who speak out are treated differently. - During my initial training, I was reprimanded for not understanding processes that were neither documented nor explained to me, leaving me feeling unmotivated and incapable. Rigid and Extended Working Hours: - The advertised working hours are 9am-6pm, but there is no flexibility. Employees must be online by 8:59am for the daily mandatory 9am stand-up meetings, requiring employees to arrive earlier to settle in. It’s common to work until 7pm or later multiple times a week, and it is frowned upon to leave at 6pm on the dot. - The company also expects employees to be on call at all times, including weekends and during annual leave. Failing to respond to client messages within an hour, even when on holiday, is deemed unacceptable. - During in-person events, employees are expected to work over 8 hours with little to no formally scheduled breaks. Due to the culture created, asking for a break is frowned upon. - High levels of micromanagement in this company lead to decreased productivity. High Turnover and Poor Scaling: - The company size has never increased beyond approximately 20 employees due to frequent firings and resignations. - In May 2024, seven people left the company—three quit (two without securing another job) and four were fired without prior warning or performance improvement plans, despite the company being short-staffed. Double Standards and Poor Communication: - There are blatant double standards, favouritism, and gossip among the leadership, leading to deep mistrust. - Positive reviews on this platform are likely written by the leadership team themselves to manipulate the company’s image, as some role titles do not match those within the team. - Internal communications are poorly managed, with no effective systems for documenting processes apart from posting on Discord. Suggestions for improvements are dismissed, and employees are told to "simply be better." Exploitation of New Graduates: - The company predominantly hires new graduates, exploiting their lack of work experience to perpetuate the toxic culture. In summary, this company is disorganised and traumatising to work for. The only "skill" you might gain here is resilience against a toxic work environment. I recommend investing more time in finding a better job elsewhere, as the mental and emotional toll this company takes is not worth any potential financial gain. Stay away for the sake of your well-being and career growth.

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.