Notpla Reviews

The youth of the team is also a negative, as there is a lack of expertise in most areas of the business and retention of talent is an issue. Notpla tends to hire young people who will be able to adapt to what the company wants, rather than trust in experience. There are too many competing projects going on which leads to slow progression and competition for resources and attention from senior staff. The technical challenges faced by all of Notpla's projects are huge, and they need more resource on the technical side to make the products viable. The office is overcrowded with people, materials and equipment and is sometimes dangerous and quite dirty. Facilities for staff to eat lunch are not good and the building has no insulation so temperature regulation is poor outside the main office room. The lack of direction leads to many projects or collaborations which seem like a waste of time and often don't have a clear sustainability advantage. These projects tend to disrupt long term development work and affect morale. Working hours 9-6 is not competitive.

The company is run by two co-CEOs who have not delegated management responsibility to any other person despite tripling the amount of personnel, which has resulted in them being the sole line managers for 30 people. Performance reviews are done every three months with no written record or plans made for progress which leads to complete career stagnation. When I discussed the fact that I had raised complaints in previous 1to1s, I was told: 'we manage so many people, it's impossible to give full attention to one person'. Newness and speed to market are prioritised over due diligence, with a prevailing attitude that any cracks should be painted over until the next fundraise when the can of worms can be reopened. This is completely antithetical to the ideas of sustainability that Notpla puports to uphold. The vast majority of production work is done in house (by hand) to make passable prototypes for customers and investors. This is where most of Notpla's resources are invested, with the necessary industrialisation work continuously being undermined and delayed by management indecision. Anyone who opposes suggestions or contradicts this mentality of 'never say die' (sic) is perceived as being negative and put under review. As a result, interns and consultants are regularly hired to reanalyse work done by full time employees that they do not have the appropriate knowledge, experience or time to dissect. Said full time employees are constantly questioned, denied requests for resources and publicly undermined until it is impossible to continue the project work without making concessions. Despite only superficially checking in on people's work, Notpla has a culture of complete micro-management. Daily briefings require employees to report on their previous day's work to the whole company and a lot of attention is paid to people's working hours, but minimal attention is paid to the content of their work or their needs to progress it (ie. keep your head down and look busy). There is an archaic mentality regarding home working and lip service is paid to being flexible which does not translate to any meaningful work/life balance. The expectation is that you will spend all of your time on site and willingly work unpaid overtime in order to get the job done. Wages are bottom of the barrel for the location and the level of responsibility employees are expected to take on. Equity is minimal.