Negatives: leadership, opaque decision making, boring work, micromanagement
The word research is misleading, recruitment describes it better. Engagement with content is minimal, there are strong disincentives to actually learning about the topics, because it costs valuable time. Workload is consistently high and together with the target system generates strong incentives to work overtime. This is not compulsory and a minority of people does manage to leave on time consistently.
Giving responsibilities to young people can lead to people managing others who have very little experience and not in every case obvious talent for this. Therefore new hires have very different experiences as some managers prioritise short term results over long term development and treat people they like of the same rank widely differently. This is especially true when somebody does not hit their targets, which will be blamed on the individual, regardless of external factors such as the amount of work coming in. The inconsistent treatment applies to other aspects as well, for example leaving the company. Ineffective middle/upper management has in the past failed to address issues of leadership and above average pressure on individuals or teams.
The numbers based target system as well as frequent feedback are supposed to ensure transparency and commons standards, but are applied inconsistently. In fact, I often felt as if transparency stops with management: Decisions are taken in closed meeting with most employees being told afterwards or find out when information slowly leaks through the company.
In addition to the individual management issues outlined above, there is a general tendency in Third Bridge to micromanage processes in order to maximise narrow, company specific measures of efficiency. Competent employees have been told when and how to communicate dozens of times a day, making them perform worse. Despite a supposed culture of openness and developing people, feedback on the way the firm is run does not seem to be implemented beyond cosmetic measures. You will hear a lot about the values, but I did not feel they were central to the way Third Bridge works.
