Up Learn Reviews

- Really poor leadership - instead of building you up, they knock you down and go out their way to point out that you've done something wrong. I experienced demeaning and patronising management that instilled so much doubt in my own capabilities. On numerous occasions I was treated rudely and then the next day, I would be apologised to - it was a toxic cycle - Unsurprisingly, churn was a huge issue. In the space of a year or so, some 15 people left. Management would always brush it aside and say it was best for both parties/they wanted that person to leave anyway rather than look at themselves and think about how they, and the company, could improve. A lot of good people left because of a combination of poor management, salary and working hours. There was huge dissatisfaction amongst the team with many of the positive Glassdoor reviews being requested by management. More than often, roles were left unfilled once someone left so the workload just spread amongst the team and if you ended up taking on someone's responsibilities, there would be little/no pay increase - Micromanaging is at the core of this company yet the irony is, management don’t even know what they want in the first place. I wasn't given the freedom to do anything independently and every little I thing I did was picked apart, we’d go round and round in circles. This back and forth was mirrored into the vision and strategy of the company making it hard to comprehend what was actually expected of you in the first place. There seemed to be only one way of doing things and if you deviated from this, it was deemed completely wrong, therefore even the smallest tasks took so painfully long to do making me feel like I had achieved nothing – the role was wholly unsatisfying despite me having done so much work - Incredibly toxic culture. Essentially, the majority of management put themselves first and if anything went wrong, they threw their reports under the bus. A lot of management could get the job done but few had the emotional intellect to actually invest in and bring out the best in their reports. Sometimes employees were strategically bullied/pushed out of the company because they were no longer considered useful - Abysmal pay with management openly admitting they take advantage of young, fresh graduates who don't expect much in terms of salary and management, though there are clear favourites amongst leadership who would get the significant pay rises of 20%+ whilst the rest get below inflation. The pay discrepancies were truly shocking. A lot of the time, it's a dead end role, or filler roles are made up to make it that extra bit harder for you to progress upwards. There were plans to reward management with bumper pay cheques once funding came into fruition but undoubtedly this is taking longer than planned. The hypocrisy was more evident when particular members of leadership would buy expensive equipment on the company card, expense commutes in Ubers and go on costly team meals yet junior members of the team were denied buying WFH equipment - When I asked for help not only because of my workload but also because I felt I lacked the experience to complete tasks that impacted the integral running of the company, I was told to just be confident and get the job done because the previous person who did my job also had no experience and managed to “figure it out”. In lieu of paying professionals to do the job correctly in half the amount of time, I was left to Google what to do only to be reprimanded if I did the slightest thing wrong. For example, the company had reached 50 full time employees yet we still had no HR with much of the arduous work of HR and recruitment, accounts and finance, I.T, all roles in their own right, being lumped onto existing employees at the expense of their wellbeing

The pace of work was slow. The company struggled to learn from mistakes. This was made worse by the low technical and business experience across the company. Micromanagement often resulted in long discussions with no action. As a result, the product has not changed much in years. I did not feel empowered to do my best work. There were a lot of issues with culture that stemmed from upper management. Blame games from the management team had a detrimental impact on the entire company’s ability to learn, take responsibility and evolve. Management was also defensive about critical feedback, both from employees and from customers. I believe this stemmed from lack of maturity. Despite attempting to embrace radical candour, management struggled with honesty and transparency. People were often purposefully left in the dark, in particular about employees leaving the company and the reasons for their leaving. There were also large discrepancies in salary which employees were forbidden from talking about. In general, additional responsibility was not accompanied by an increase in pay. I saw many talented employees leave because they felt unheard, underappreciated and underpaid.