TAINA Technology Reviews

- The people. The main culprit being the CTO, who many here have described as a "dictator", which I couldn't agree more with. There were times when he was bearable but most of the time he was a cutthroat "leader" who instantly expected the world from you. On the off chance he didn't come across like that and used his other persona, he'd approach you with such an unbearable level of fake positivity, I'm not sure which one I hated more. He wasn't the only bad apple there, it's a systemic issue in the company coming from the top down. I never dealt with her much but I've heard the CEO is the exact same. Many people there were often pretentious and filled with ego, The standard of communication often left a lot to be desired, sometimes receiving no or single word responses from people. With that being said, the immense workload and pressure put on people often left little time for proper communication at times. The only consistent communication among colleagues is that everyone wants to leave. Barely anyone likes it there but some feel they are in a golden handcuffs situation, whether that's due to stock or having an admittedly cushy salary for a fully remote role. - The culture. Taina's approach to growing a company culture is perhaps well intended, but the execution just isn't right. Enforced social time every sprint is just not the way to do it, nor is requiring cameras to be on, and chasing people with "vids on please :)" when they don't also does not help. It's openly and proudly stated by the higher ups that "Taina is not a 9-5", so do with that statement as you please. The funny part is it's quite literally a 9-5, or a 9-5:30. For being a remote company, the rigid working hours are a joke. You'll be able to pop out for an appointment (probably other job interviews) and the like during the day and will be expected to work it back which is fair, but to have actual fully flexible working hours and work 8-4:30 or take 30 minutes instead of an hour for lunch is a pipe dream. The funny thing is you will be expected to not follow the working hours when it suits them. If you need to take lunch but you've got a ticket due? Nah go hungry. Got a dog that needs walking? Nope. You'll often be expected to work on in the evenings and deliver things if need be. Also the company-wide meeting every single day is insane. The reasoning behind it is that "we're a small company, everyone should know what everyone is doing". No, I as a software engineer do not need to know that marketing made a new post on LinkedIn. This is also where each week's "focus goals" are given by each team which took me straight back to primary school! - The tech / product. While the tech stack is modern, it's not the nicest codebase to work on, but it's also not the worst. The main issue is the level of domain knowledge they expect you to possess. Taina operates in the tax compliance space which is specialised knowledge gained over time, but they expect you to pick that up very quickly and will look down on you when you don't know it off by heart immediately. You may also be aggresively made to work in areas of the code which you've made clear you don't know and aren't comfortable taking the lead on. While in theory this can be good, upskilling a member of the team in an area they don't know, the execution is far from good. Forcing someone to work in an area they don't know, as a punishment for not knowing enough about the area when asked in front of a group is actually quite unpleasant and stressful. As a dev you'll work quite closely with the product team to figure out the desired solution / behaviour, which at times can be nice and collaborative, but rarely. It also feels quite unsettling to have such a large voice in deciding the desire functionality / logic around tax compliance and other legal matters. These kind of things should be clearly defined by experts and given to the dev team, not open ended suggestions / possibilities. It would also greatly help with the stress levels on the team. As a dev you may also be expected to focus heavily on QA automation testing instead of writing production code as the QA resources on the team are spread so thin. Another fun little Taina quirk is that you'll do the work and post a PR for it, ask the team to take a look, which usually nobody will for a couple days, keep nudging the team to take a look, but still nobody will because everyone's so busy and they don't get a chance, and you'll then be told off because it's your fault nobody else reviewed your work because you didn't nag / beg enough! - The salary / compensation. I've got to say, the salary when you first join will likely be pretty good, With it being a remote company too, it can feel very enticing, along with the fairly generous bonuses too, but unfortunately those bonuses are entirely dependant on the CTO's current mood on the day he decides what everyone gets. The only downside in regards to salary / bonuses is that they will stagnate over time. You will not get annual salary increases and will have to fight tooth and nail for a promotion, sometimes going years without getting one even when it's most definitely deserved. Taina also offer stock options to everyone who joins the company but are very reluctant to say how much of the company those stock options represent. They repeatedly claim it's a tricky question to answer and evade it, but in reality it's quite an easy thing to answer. Fortunately you can find this information out on Company's House if you're curious! - The onboarding. The onboarding consisted of reading a bunch of documentation to gain both domain and product knowledge, followed by some tests/quizzes and product demos, quickly followed by getting a fairly complicated system set up locally. During this I was pressured by the CTO to "speed up" and that I was "behind the curve", not things you want to hear when just starting out at a new job, but to my surprise, every single one of my co-workers said I had actually got through the onboarding quite quickly, some saying it was the quickest they had seen someone do it. I'm not sure what his goal was by this, maybe to put me on the backfoot from the start so letting me go could be easier, but hearing him say months later after letting someone else go during their probation period that from now on he'd be "ruthless" in regards to handling probation periods sounded all too familiar. I can't stress this enough, this place is not a supportive environment. I wouldn't recommend it to anyone at any stage in their career, but especially juniors / new grads.