Good pay but deeply toxic culture and broken leadership - Senior Software Engineer Experian Employee Review

1.0
12 Feb 2026
Recommend
CEO approval
Business outlook

Pros

Competitive pay package, comparable to other well-paying companies in the industry.

Cons

- Extremely toxic culture, especially if you end up in the wrong team under poor leadership. - Persistent lack of respect for individuals; open insults and public criticism in team meetings are normalised under the label of “challenge.” - Clear rift between Engineering and Product. This was one of the most dysfunctional cross-functional setups I have seen: Product frequently tried to run the show and make technical decisions on behalf of engineers. There was little to no mutual respect between functions. Regular arguments and power struggles added significantly to the overall toxicity. - Strong management bias — employees are judged based on role, tenure, and proximity to management rather than actual contribution. - Performance reviews and year-end ratings lack transparency and can be influenced by trivial factors (e.g. incomplete training), with no real opportunity to challenge outcomes. - The appeal process does not work and feels purely procedural. - Career progression is virtually impossible without being in your manager’s good books, regardless of performance. - Scrum Masters are highly micromanaging: Daily questioning of what you are doing and what you will do next. Excessive tracking and note-taking against tickets. Focus on surveillance rather than enabling delivery or team health. - Poor duty of care towards employee wellbeing and mental health.

Explore other reviews about Experian

5.0
4 Jun 2026
Recommend
CEO approval
Business outlook

Pros

Great environment and people management is amazing

Cons

None that I can think of

1.0
10 Jun 2026
Recommend
CEO approval
Business outlook

Pros

Decent salary & benefits, monthly no internal meeting days

Cons

Friendly reminder that HR does not care about you. They care about staff with seniority, whom they will allow to retaliate despite that being against company policies. Think twice about reporting the higher ups because it will come back to haunt you, guaranteed. Also, AI is the only thing that matters anymore. Watching the volume of once-impressive colleagues become so single and simple minded through constant AI usage is not only disappointing but genuinely alarming. Thinking for oneself is no longer the standard, it seems, and speaking against such unfettered use of AI in all things will get you professionally ostracized.

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