Pros
2.5 stars if halves were allowed*
- Work/life balance (at least for my role) was good. Never forced to work more but I imagine if you’re more senior this might not be the case.
- The first half of my employment was friendly and had a few employee focused events. Could almost say the environment was ‘fun’.
- My manager was great: helpful, supportive and understanding (non family member).
- CEO was approachable and happy to educate on topics especially in the first half of my employment. He’s built an interesting business which is owed a lot of a respect.
- Able to experiment with new ideas (to some degree).
Cons
- This is a small family run company with two family members below the CEO. I was at one point the 10th longest serving staff member (not including family) after being there a ‘whopping’ 2.5 years. This was fine initially but the atmosphere weirdly turned almost exactly halfway through my employment. At times being in the office (I believe it’s now exclusively a remote company) felt like being at school: constant desk shuffles, hushed silences, the occasional telling off for talking. The mood absolutely stank and wasn’t helped by the attitude of some senior management who wouldn’t even look at you sometimes when talking to you. On my last day (having been there three years and an office regular) one of whom didn’t even look up from her desk to say goodbye.
- Quarterly reviews and progression reviews are not worth the paper they’re written on. You can complete all the required steps and perform them consistently but then more will suddenly be added. A pure tick-box exercise. Any progression is decided by the whole family even if they’re not the CEO or part of your team.
- They used (at least when I was there) software to track your every mouse movement. It was claimed this was to adhere to the needs of some of their customers (which I imagine was true given the importance of some of them) but I saw first hand how it was used having sat directly behind an employee for some time. Spend hours a day surfing the software on employee profiles to see exactly how they were working (this furthered the horrible atmosphere).
- Benefits are a bit of a joke. A 3% employer pension contribution is not a benefit, it’s a legal obligation. The only actual benefits were a discounts portal which was largely useless except the once a month free coffee. No healthcare, no life assurance, at least when I was there.
- Employee events fell off a cliff halfway through my time when everything else started getting a bit sour. There’s almost no ‘culture’ (whatever that even means) which isn’t helped with the eggshell treading atmosphere.
- I’ve never seen staff turnover as bad as it is here - particularly in sales and some recruitment. People will come and go within weeks. You’re always going to get people who don’t work out but at some point you had to look at the hiring/onboarding/training process if it’s failing THAT often. We were pretty stable in our team, but within operations, sales, marketing, HR/recruitment (anything outside the tech/support teams) that was an exception, not the rule.