Bad management can take good staff and destory it
Pros
I will try to provide a view which I feel accurately reflects the experience I had at the company, and its potential. I can only speak from my time at the business and my experience. I have been honest as my intention is not to get this review removed like I have seen many other one star reviews being axed for some reason or another, but to help others make informed decisions about working here. Pros The office in Nottingham is a fantastic city centre location with good working hours in the department which I was in. My line manager was enjoyable to work for as were most of the people I worked with closely (day to day interactions). My line manager offered flexible working hours and trusted me with a good chunk of work.
Cons
In my experience the business lacks good decisive management from the top. It is important to recognise the hard work and effort that has gone into starting, and growing, this business and it is understandable that there is a level of attachment from the higher management. However, in my opinion, in order for the business and its staff to benefit from the growth being experienced, and enjoy its potential, there needs to be a rapid shift in management. The business has done well to get to its current point however to go further requires a step back and employment of experienced senior management. There has been some attempt at this through employing a chief of people but I felt the problem ran much deeper than that. I would also have to agree with many comments on here that there is somewhat of an authoritarian approach from management which leads to fear, and results in poor decision making for the wider business as staff would like to keep their jobs rather than voice their opinion only to be shot down. This is evident from the past 6 months of high levels of senior staff turn over. The business felt unwilling to change with its growth to adopt a serious control environment. This is essential for a business that wants to grow and develop, and be a serious player - eventually start-ups need to grow up to make progress. I would honestly have to say that there are very few people employed at higher levels who I respected and thought should be in their current roles and have that level of seniority. In fact I would say the ones I interacted with mostly lack credentials and would be unlikely to survive in other companies at their current levels for more than a probation period: under qualified and will run the company into the ground with ill-considered and poorly executed, unrealistic plans. For example, the idea of heavy investment is perfectly acceptable if there have been well considered plans and considered appraisals but the ethos of “it’s a tech firm so it’ll be fine” doesn’t stack up and I felt that huge cracks were starting to appear.
