Pros
Salary and benefits. The London office is really nice and spacious. The facilities are very clean and spacious. Coffee machine is great. The tech infrastructure is really impressive. Though not perfect. Everyone apart from my manager was really helpful and welcoming.
Cons
I'm actually still employed by Vanguard until this Friday (10/12/2021) but when I went into the office on Monday, after handing my resignation letter in last Friday. I logged on to my laptop and my name was removed from the team rota. Removed from the team meeting, and after getting the hint and returning my laptop to one of the other tech staff. It looks like my account has been terminated. My manager nowhere to be seen, and nobody from management spoke to me. Toxic manager My manager was hired a week before me. And after one week he had already formed opinions that my other colleagues were withholding information and that he was watching everyone. Telling me and my other new starter colleague that the graduates are "taking the p". One of them broke their fingers and he ramped up his toxic opinions. I unfortunately broke my hand in my first week, so can imagine what he was saying about that. The graduates were actually great and were extremely supportive. My manager also has no knowledge or experience with anything we do or the systems we use. Which is very new to me. It was like working with a middle man being dictated by Vanguard in America. Misleading job description If you're experienced in tech then this job is not for you. The job description does not tell you that you'll be on the phone 100% of the time every day. 95% is dealing with password resets from contractors in India. You will get paid well, and Vanguard offers great benefits. But it's not worth it for me. Awful mental wellbeing I was put on expedited training so instead of 3 weeks, it was done over a week and few days. 2 days after my training I was called into a Teams meeting by my manager and basically interrogated about why I was going off the phone queue because the US were asking. And that I need to be on the queue within 10 minutes of starting my shift at 7am. The systems Vanguard use are so slow, and require 2-factor authentication. It takes a while to be ready to take calls. The phone system is one of the worst things I've experienced in my career. If you go toilet, or get up to make a tea or need to speak to someone. You have to report it in the Genesys phone system. Even if you need to browse to a website or do something on your laptop. You have to mark it as training. It all counts as not being on the phone queue. When you finish a call, it immediately puts through the next call. Everything is tracked and timed. There is no time to then reflect on tickets you've completed or were unsure of. Or to learn anything to help with future tickets. As you always feel like you're being watched. You'll be told that it's totally fine to do other things.. "when it's not busy". Which means you're literally tied to your desk on the phone and unable to even talk to anyone on your team. Most of the systems I needed access to do my job were not working during and after training. Including the phone system. Which I only got a bit of training on my last day of training. There are also many US only software and some really old systems that take a while to learn how they work. But with not being able to take time to read up or study them because you're constantly on the phone. You don't feel like you're being productive. You're almost like a robot. My manager arranged for me to be added to the Full Access phones queue without asking if I was ready. Which meant I was dealing with almost hostile US callers who came through the "Priority" phone queue. Everything requires you to report in to someone in such a long drawn out draining process. Your lunch break and whole day schedule is shown in the phone system. 7am-3pm on the phones, with a lunch slot at 12-1pm. So I wanted to change my assigned 12pm lunch slot to 11.30am. As I start at 7am. My manager then pointed me towards someone in America. Who then added 2x other people in the Teams chat. Who then asked me if I want to change my lunch time for the 8am shift and then never replied back to me. And the schedule never changed. It all got a bit draining so I chose to leave Vanguard and will be going back to my last job. Where I feel appreciated, have time and space to interact with everyone, and can learn new tech.
