Pros
There are a lot of wonderful and intelligent people who work here. Outside of management there is a good level of support. Curiosity and learning are well supported. Brighton is a great town to work in. The quality of Frontend code is high and developers are always striving to maintain that and improve on it. The product is cool and there are a lot worse jobs out there. Caveat: My own experience is not representative of most people’s. But certainly a significant minority feel similarly to me.
Cons
I’ve found there to be a significant bias within engineering. Engineering is not a diverse space, almost all diversity is at lower levels or right at the top. There is a huge gap between associate / mid level and exec. Exec isn’t exactly diverse either, although they’re certainly not as bad as a lot of other places. If you don’t fit the archetype of cis, straight, white, male then you do feel it. Personally for me it was my gender that I felt hurt my chances of being listened to, promoted, paid fairly or valued by the company. MPB are ok at getting diversity in at lower levels but there are absolutely no mechanisms in place to support you after that. And you will not be heard if you ask for them or point out that they’re missing. Maybe the People team could identify and act upon why a lot of people are leaving, but I doubt it. I've never been asked so often in anonymous surveys _what_ I am... gay, straight, male, female... but never asked how I am. My experience of management whilst I worked here was lacklustre. I was mismanaged, I had multiple managers in 4 years. There was little to no support after I returned to work from parental leave, whilst also grieving the loss of 3 grandparents and navigating an additional family crisis. That year was incredibly difficult, I passed that message up and was met with nothing. I don’t think poor management is specific to engineering but I do think engineering is particularly poor, possibly due to the lack of diversity at those levels. I was not paid fairly. I found out that a colleague in exactly the same role as me was paid significantly more than me (over 10%). I moved companies into exactly the same level role for a 25% pay rise. I think that’s decent evidence. The bottom line is that MPB ground me down until I was no longer myself. I wasn't supported, trusted or valued and that's not worth going to work for.
