CEO sold out to a Chinese company. Endless bureaucracy, rigid top-down structure, and constant monitoring/reviews.
Pros
Before everyone left, they had decent people who were competent at their roles. The offices are nice. The technologies we used to work on were diverse and interesting. I learned a lot there.
Cons
Initially Worldfirst was a reasonable company to work for. They seemed to care about their staff. It was an inviting place to work in. There were smiling unicorns and rainbows, with fluffy bunny rabbits Morris-dancing in the meeting rooms. Soon after, the Darkness came. The CEO - consumed with glitter and greed - sold (out) the company to a behemoth Chinese company. This company was known to treat their employees like commodities. Unsurprisingly, we all became commodities. We were told that there would be little change. "Our values are the same", chortled the new CEO as he sat on his throne of yuan. "Our values are the same", we all replied in unison. But our values were not the same. They were very different. Within 12 months, the rainbows wilted, the unicorns stopped smiling, and the disheartened, fluffy bunny rabbits ran off with our 80" 4K LED screens. We began suffocating under the new regime. Accosted with continual performance reviews, mandatory form-filling, mandatory meetings about performance reviews and form-filling, mandatory internal compliance exams and optional-but-not-if-you-value-your-job re-education training. Choices were taken away from us, "for the greater good". My Linux laptop was torn from my arms. "It's not secure", they chanted whilst staring at me with soulless eyes. "It's not secure", I repeated - the irony wasted on them. They nodded and gave me a MacBook Pro. It was riddled with bloated spyware, bringing the laptop to its knees. I stayed quiet. We were no longer allowed to use Slack and Outlook. It's not secure, they said. Instead, we had to use their home-grown, Pound-Stretcher alternatives. Every word I typed, every sad-face emoji I tapped, they were watching me. No one smiled anymore. No one talked anymore. We became soulless machines. Any complaints to the new CEO were stonewalled. He frowned and shook his head, whilst an elephant casually sauntered across the room behind him. Eventually, people from all departments and positions began to leave in swarms. Originally our department had four tribe leads. By the time I left, there was only one remaining. The CTO had left, a couple of his deputies had left. Several team leads had left. A dozen or so senior developers/devops had left. All of our business analysts were made redundant. For the greater good. Unfortunately, there is no Hollywood ending. Rumour has it that the unicorns have spiralled into hard substance abuse; feeding their habits by mugging any passing scrum masters or agile coaches. Meanwhile, the fluffy bunny rabbits - seeing a gap in the market - cross trained as scrum masters and agile coaches.
