GoCardless reviews about "middle management"

1. Middle Management: Middle management at GoCardless tend to be quite young and inexperienced in effectively managing people. Moreover, people are often promoted into middle management positions without displaying real management competency and without adequate training. The net result is that you could easily have your career progression miss-managed and/or have managers who don't understand how to manage people effectively, this is particularly important if you don't fit into the 'typical' mould of a start up employee, e.g. a parent. 2. General Strategy: The company is unlikely to execute its vision of offering the ability to take payments from anyone in any country and in any currency. The regional and operational differences in Direct Debit schemes globally make it virtually impossible to aggregate and integrate each scheme into a single product offered by a single company. Secondly (for several reasons) GoCardless have traditionally struggled to attract the huge companies (think Netflix & Spotify scale) that take recurring payments and would benefit from a global Direct Debit payment network. GoCardless are essentially building a global network which their larger customers will only use to collect funds from say a maximum of 3/4 countries at best. 3. Strategy Execution: The company is in the process of attempting to execute the above and making some mistakes. Primarily becoming extremely bloated, going on a hiring spree (particularly in engineering/product) whilst also aggressively cutting costs. Several hires/positions just don't make sense (e.g. aggressively expanding a marketing department that has yet show it can effectively drive inbound lead traffic), the company is clearly eyeing an exit and in doing so is aggressively cutting its cost base whilst stretching revenue targets into the realm of unrealistic. Startups generally pay a low base, allowing sales people to supplement the base via commissions which are in-turn based on hitting targets. With unrealistic targets linked to pay, the sales team is particularly demoralized.

Lots of middle management as the company scaled too many "cooks" in the kitchen

Sub-Par Stock Option offering Horrible Middle Management Contrary to what their values are people here have massive ego & arrogance issues. Weekly manger meetings were just a pointless chat that yielded no results or resolutions. Don't be fooled by other reviews here - certain departments have an extremely high staff churn. Long standing employees have clear favourites and don't have any trust for new joiners. It is VERY Cliquey here, if you're not prepared to front up and be one of the drones you'll have an extremely unpleasant time here. There are a lack of internal processes and ownership which makes the most simple tasks turn into infuriatingly difficult to solve puzzles when working on projects or day to day work. A "Pass the buck" & "Blame culture" amongst employees seems to be the norm. As a stepping stone into Fintech it's alright I suppose but if you have other options I fully encourage you to explore those instead.

Poorly maintainable tech Bad middle management Some colleagues are fairly incompotent No clarity about career growth Lots of virtue signaling

If you appreciate micromanagement, this company is a strong recommendation! - Ridiculous salary - The Middle Management is terrible, as noted in another review. Truly a total Clown Show. - Very cliquey, don’t expect to be in the “Core” group (especially if you are at the bottom of the ladder) - The leadership lacks respect for the company's values. The claim of 'We care deeply' raises questions, especially given how employees are treated daily and the decision to shift jobs to Riga. It's astonishing to see this discrepancy. - Despite fostering a high-achievement culture, employees aren't adequately rewarded due to cost-cutting measures. The entitlement for employees' work without the right compensation is surprising.

GoCardless is the worst environment I have ever worked in. The atmosphere at the company was toxic and the company is full of negative people. Management had no direction and were constantly changing strategy without any thought given to how this would affect the company. Communication was a joke, with management giving timelines which they did not stick to, and refusing to address or mention the reasons for this, instead hoping this would not be noticed and that the issue would just go away. Middle management is full of ego, which was surprising given the lack of competence at this level and a lack of ability to manage teams. There are a number of toxic people in this level, who continue to be praised even when their embarrassing behaviour has been brought up to senior management on numerous occasions. The company has a lot of cliques and very often the only way to progress is to be part of these groups, with poor performance and behaviour ignored if you have a strong relationship with certain people. Very few people seem to have direction, and the company is full of people trying to make themselves look good while paying little attention to creating a good environment and doing meaningful work. This goes for all levels of the company.

Some middle management protect themselves, and their paychecks, fiercely and will throw others under the bus instead of be umbrellas for their teams.

- Blame culture - Horrid middle management - Growing faster than they can manage - A collection of values that no one live by