Quick Release Reviews

Instead of offering a subjective, opinion-based review, I’ll simply outline a few experiences and let you decide whether this is somewhere you’d like to work: 1) The salary progression is borderline insulting. Following a full year freeze on salary reviews, employees were rewarded with performance-based increases of 0–3%. For some, this translated to roughly £6 a month post-tax. A sum that raises interesting questions about whether payroll rounding errors are now considered incentives. 2) On a project, analysts were left sleep-deprived, burned-out and with zero time or energy for a life outside of work. All for a project they were literally paying to be on. When they finally voiced concerns to management, their advice was basically: “Put up with it and you'll get promoted quicker.” Inspiring, truly. But when the next promotion window came by, their support vanished faster than Quick Release's perks after a client bankruptcy. 3) Every year we’re asked to complete a “company satisfaction survey” through a third-party platform so leadership can supposedly “drive improvements” across the business. Turns out, all the qualitative feedback employees spend time writing never even gets reviewed, because accessing those comments costs extra, and the company won’t pay for it. So apparently the only thing less valued than employee satisfaction is employee input. And this year? They’ve conveniently stopped sharing the survey results altogether. Hard not to assume the scores finally got too embarrassing to spin. 4) A staggering 13% of the UK side of the business has handed in their notice over the last few months alone. You’d think that level of attrition might prompt some reflection, or at the very least a few exit interviews. But in keeping with the company’s ongoing commitment to ignoring feedback, back office has apparently been “too busy” to speak with the employees walking out the door. It’s impressive, really: actively avoiding the one group of people most willing to tell you exactly what’s broken. 5) After losing a major client, leadership were asked directly about potential redundancies. The response? “Redundancies are absolutely not on the table.” A week later, select employees were quietly tapped on the shoulder and told they were up for redundancy....seemingly with the strategy that if it’s done privately enough, it didn’t really happen. 6) This may be the only consultancy where “client travel” is treated as a personal hobby you fund yourself. Forget about affording London rent, bills, or a basic existence, because at QR, you’re not just an employee, you’re also a sponsor. Their understanding of geography is... creative. You’ll be hired for a London position, only to be shipped off to a client site 2 hours outside of London, with no hotel, no financial support for the train cost, and a cheerful reminder that “it’s close enough, it's basically London”. For example, a number of analysts were forced to travel 4 days a week to a client site in Guildford and cover the £350/month train cost. The company also promotes expensed travel between branches. However, if you are part of the London branch and are asked to travel to a client in the Essex branch you'll be asked to cover the cost since "Essex is basically London". I must've missed the latest Google maps update. 7) During external AI training, the presenter stressed the importance of not sharing sensitive client data. Our CEO interrupted to advise everyone to ignore that guidance because “you can’t innovate without taking risks.” A bold and progressive stance for a company that consider themselves data experts. 8) The business consistently falls short of their BD targets, which means analysts will be sitting on the bench (not on project) for 4-10 months at a time. Despite this being completely out of the analysts' control (since they don't get a say on their project deployments), they will then punish these analysts by taking away their benefits, since they're not doing any billable work. And who's job is it to find them billable work? The BD team. But guess who still got their fat bonus at the end of the year? That's right. The BD team. Meanwhile the rest of us were calculating if we could treat ourselves to a premium meal deal. 9) When questioned about low salary progression, leadership explained there’s no real need to increase pay because the company receives plenty of graduate applications each year. A refreshingly honest way of saying: “You are easily replaceable.” Overall, the experience feels lot like The Titanic, but with more PowerPoints. Leadership confidently insisting everything is under control while employees quietly scramble for the exits. Proof that gaslighting really can be a business strategy

The career prospects expires after two years with this company. The business model is set up in a way to have junior analysts put in client work as specialists and given the lower salary level have higher profit margins. Therefore, having a high turnover after senior level is somewhat (secretly) desired by the leadership. Favouritism and location plays a massive role on who goes on better projects, promotions and progressions. It also plays a role in who can leave to work for clients without consequences. Salary starts as competitive at start and quickly becomes less than average after a couple of years. Slippage to other clients and recently high employee turnover is a clear indication of a decreasing job satisfaction.