Pros
Employees want to care and do better. Hybrid or remote contracts, flexible hours. Good diversity. A/C at the office helps with surviving heatwaves.
Cons
Management is blind, unqualified, or does not care. Lots of issues are not being reported to higher management, because line managers/leads do not care. Employees lose morale, motivation, hope. Issues are constantly dismissed, belittled, and ignored. Your feedback is not welcomed. Line managers LOVE to blame other people and put the work on you ("you don't know how to manage your time, by the way I don't have the time to do this so do my tasks for me"). Bullying and harassment over nothing to please their ego and feel they are important. Severe lack of transparency, communication, and probably interest. Skilling up for management means watching some videos about AI on Pluralsight. Leads do not agree on processes, communicate, or care to fix any issue/blocker, and everything is someone else's problem. If you are applying to this company, be prepared to be a yes-man and kiss their feet, else you're in for trouble. Quality of the product is abysmal, customers complain daily, nothing is done to fix the problem. Priority goes to the client that screams the loudest, including new features over fixing issues. Company acts like they are in financial difficulty. Heavily understaffed, and underpaid. What you are hired for is not going to be your job, because they don't have enough resources and you must fill in for everything. There is a huge pressure in selling, and there is never enough resources to fix any problem you can think of. Everything is cheaped out, trying to maximise profits, but this is killing their reputation, and they do not care. Employees are so unhappy that they are either completely disengaged, or they cry between meetings. Heavily overworked. They are scared to speak up because if they do, they get into trouble. Morale has left the building months ago. Vast majority is looking for an exit, and people are constantly leaving. Things get worse every week. They are not looking to replace, they are looking to fill in roles that haven't been filled yet. Onboarding is outdated, undocumented, and you're left to your own. "Someone else will teach them". Smallest issue, to be honest, which says a lot. Subtle, but strong sexism going around. Women will say they are told to not talk back to their superiors, to accept tedious work and leave the more important work with men, that they have an attitude problem, that they need to smile and make themselves available to chat with while men can concentrate on their work. Their concerns or ideas are less likely to be taken seriously unless a man backs them up. They are more likely to be belittled and blamed. They are more likely to "have issues". And management does not want them to skill up, or recognise their current skill set. If you are a woman, don't bother applying, unless you want a boring, thankless job. Office is fully open, which means you cannot focus on your work as there is no separation. You can hear everyone, and your meetings will be interrupted by random yelling, cheering, or gong (to signal when you need to applaud a sale). You will notice who is taking their job seriously; it is those who fleeing to the kitchen, because it is the only quiet place at the office, while the managers take the meeting rooms. Everyone describes the office as miserable, as it is too noisy, too distracting, and you would not be talking with your peers. Most of them are remote, after all. People living near Guildford don't even want to go there. Things will not improve until management dares to care. AI is not the solution.
