Kainos Reviews

Pros

Right approach to people who want a great career, with fair rewards while also enjoying the right work/life balance

Cons

Very few - the company has been growing very quickly so the normal growing pains exist but they acknowledge this and are pretty good at fixing the issues and communicating to staff during the process.

Pros

£250 a year for each employee to spend on any learning-based skill is a great perk. Free coffee, breakfast and fruit in all offices is also a bonus.

Cons

Majority of projects require you to travel.

Pros

salary, nice people to work with

Cons

a bit boring but it suited some people

Pros

Excellent benefit package and personal growth opportunities

Cons

none to note so far

Pros

Kainos have spent alot of time on employee welfare and small perks which make the life of some of it's employees better. Payday Drinks etc are great if that's up your street.

Cons

My personal experience of Kainos over 5 years has unfortunately just gone from bad to worse. I applied for a job online with a number of others, we were all offered the exact same position having applied for the same job, yet for some reason I was employed at a lower banding. It took me 2 years to get to the band which was the same as my colleagues, despite doing the exact same job. This is an ongoing theme in... Kainos also, a number of it's long-standing employees are doing senior jobs at a lower band, I known Product Owners and Senior Consultants on 3 different banding levels, this runs right through the business into Sales & Marketing also. What this ultimately does, is give these employees an incentive to leave. For me personally, it's not amount the money, but the banding determines your career progression, so for the entire time i've been at Kainos, whilst I have learnt alot, I feel that my career has been halted somewhat. I currently don't have a Job Description and my manager has changed 3-4 times in the past 12 months, so in terms of progression it feels that i've hit a complete dead end. There are a number of people in the Business who will feel they've been forgotten about and there is certainly a black hole within Kainos which has sucked up some of it's loyal and long standing people who have been forgotten about.

Advice to Management

Banding needs to be fair, people doing the same jobs need to be on the same banding, end of story. Ensure that when people change roles, they are given an updated job description.

Pros

Free fruit and cereal Working from home

Cons

Basically your made to feel like you have to get the work done even if jt is in your own time.

Advice to Management

Fair salaries for employees.

Pros

The caliber of people is very high

Cons

Cramped office spaces, there is an expectation that you have to travel.

Pros

Some great people at the company. Really top notch engineers and technical architects who you can learn a lot from. Some very interesting projects and tech stacks. Travel opportunities are plentiful (which is a perk if you like travel) Generous when it comes to working from home. Pretty good career progression if you put the effort in. There's no doubt about it; Kainos still has a good reputation... in Ireland. It's still a good name to have on your CV.

Cons

Company dropped out of Top 100 companies this year on the Times list, but still implies it is a top 100 company. This is disingenuous. Travel opportunities are plentiful (which is a negative if you don't like or cannot travel). There is a sense that Kainos will take on any customer, even if the customer is dreadful, difficult to work with and the work is awful and it has a detrimental effect on frontline... staff. This seems to have become more of an issue after the company went public. Pay is definitely an issue, but that's not only a problem with Kainos. I think the issue is with the notorious "benchmarking" tech companies in Belfast do. They only seem to benchmark against the old boys club (companies who have been here 15+ years). So the likes of Liberty, Kainos and AllState think they are on point with tech sector pay in Belfast, but in reality the tech sector in Belfast is booming and many new American based companies coming in are simply paying far more. So, benchmarking and salaries is an area of concern. Which is part of... Retention. While Kainos does have amazing people, it isn't doing that well retaining them. Incredibly experienced, highly skilled staff are simply walking out the door for better jobs and opportunities at rates which would make most People/HR teams shudder. On call can be an issue for teams, but again, this isn't just a Kainos issue. On call can be a major pain point for a lot of tech professionals in lots of companies.

Advice to Management

You are doing a lot of things really well, but you need to really make retention your number 1 priority. If you flood the place with inexpensive, inexperienced 18 year olds, that might make your company more profitable for a while but longer term top talent will simply go elsewhere and your company will suffer accordingly.