iwoca Reviews

- Harsh feedback culture without enough thought going into career development frameworks. Very much "if you know, you know" culture in tech and analytics. - Deep-rooted aversion to "corporate BS" within higher management, which although is well-intended, ultimately undermines product and project managers, and makes the organisation of work chaotic and unpredictable. - Disorganised ways of working results in fragmented teamwork. Many people end up getting their head down and trying to do something useful by themselves. Easy to slip through the cracks. Shout about your work as much as possible if you want to be noticed, because there isn't the management framework there to disseminate and judge your work consistently. - There is an inner circle of experienced, very intelligent developers / data scientists holding management positions, who come up with interesting ideas for projects but fail to communicate or organise these well, resulting in continuously moving goal posts and shuffling priorities. - Constant emphasis on "entrepreneurial growth-mindset" and "being your own boss", which creates a clash of overconfident code cowboys and unempowered middle management. - Very good pay for a select few who's work and influence is judged, subjectively, to be outstanding. Below average pay for people who either do the more non-glamorous but essential maintenance work (e.g addressing technical debt) or simply don't make as bigger noise about the work they do. - People work long hours because of thinly outlined expectations and fear of harsh feedback. Pay is likewise below average in the industry. - Out of hours work culture. Tech management explicitly mentioned that being available to answer slack messages and deal with urgent work on the weekends was a valued asset (in context of promotions/pay rises) - Several instances of people being fired during probation. "Deep end" onboarding process.

• They "do a lot of things for D&I" but it's all smoke and mirrors. They might sponsor D&I events and bring in speakers for LGBTQ history month but the culture itself is toxic and exhausting if you're a minority working in tech. This comes from the founders, particularly the CTO. He shares sexist and transphobic rhetoric on Slack and argues bluntly about triggering topics, doesn't think empathy is useful or something he is capable of, doesn't like being criticised for any of this, and thinks diversity is only worthwhile if it makes you more money. I'm disgusted iwoca won a D&I award this year. • There's generally an aggressive culture in tech. This means they undervalue people who aren't naturally aggressive and give harsh feedback. As a woman in tech I was yelled at when things weren't going well, saw many other women in tears because of how they'd been treated and watched excellent women be consistently undervalued. • Barely any of the product team have been given the support and autonomy they need to do valuable work. They get shut down before they're able to spend tech time or tied up in big tech debt projects. The leadership team seems to think this is because they are useless. • Their tech infrastructure is a giant monolith that nobody really understands. They've spent years refactoring it to try and make it do something it wasn't designed for and now even less people understand it, and it's very hard to get anything done. • They insist on building internal tools when you could easily buy something much better