Demoralising, stressful, out-dated technology, unpleasant working environment
Pros
Great location, shame about the office I worked with some very talented people (most of whom were grossly under appreciated) Friendly atmosphere in some departments, however not all Bonuses if you are fortunate enough to be at a level/in a department that qualifies for them (and the company hits its targets)
Cons
A large number of senior staff have worked their way up. They try and spin this as "promoting from within", however the reality is they are not willing to pay the going rate for these senior roles, and the people now in them lack the required skills and experience Following on from this, the company is out of touch with market rates for both permanent and contract technology roles The Brighton office is very run-down and not a nice working environment. The kitchen and toilets in particular are disgraceful, and there is nowhere in the building to eat lunch except at your desk. I'm sure they would try and blame these issues on the restrictions of building regulations in an old property, however that doesn't excuse broken fixtures, peeling paint, obsolete equipment piled up everywhere, or putting zero effort into making these areas pleasant Excessive use of proprietary (and in many cases legacy) software and tools made it difficult to attract talent, and retain the good employees they did have. Not enough investment in innovation I witnessed many poor senior management decisions, eg making long term and highly knowledgeable employees redundant only to replace them with expensive and inexperienced contractors shortly after Alarming lack of leadership and investment in Quality Assurance. The team had to use trial versions of software, which require rebooting every hour, because the company refused to pay for the full licenses Many single points of failure, in some cases only one person responsible or holding knowledge for an entire department or service(s) Poor project and sales planning, most days were spent firefighting due to unrealistic deadlines, insufficient budget and inadequate QA Unrealistic utilisation (chargeable time) targets that allowed virtually no time for personal improvement, or for managers/seniors/leads to nurture their teams Offers very little time or resources for internal training, not what you would expect from a learning company Haemorrhages money on expensive contractors due to a lack of strategy and planning, and then often giving the interesting work to these contractors affecting the morale and career progression opportunities of permanent employees Outdated workflow processes, many project managers were still using spreadsheets rather than project tracking software
