Pros
I have worked within the business for over 4 years, during my time here I have worked on both Testing and Technical Support departments.
- Loose uniform policy
- Free food on Tuesdays
- Good holiday package (25 days holiday + bank holidays + 1 year for each year of service)
- Discount scheme for local stores
- Yearly company-wide team building event
- Christmas party / awards event
- Team Social nights
- City centre office location
- Awesome people throughout the business
- Limited sick pay policy (3 days p/a)
Cons
Unfortunately, the company is experiencing a lot of issues. After a takeover from a venture-capital in America, the company has moved no further forwards in fixing the software nor fixing the work culture. Morale is low across the entire business, with little work being done to fix it.
Middle management is questionable, their job roles and responsibilities are ill-defined thus they are often seen grouped together gossiping or chatting about things completely unrelated to work.
: Development and Product Issues :
- Upper Management seem to be sleepwalking, none seem to be capable of being proactive. Constantly fighting fire with yet more fire
- Archaic Development Process with a reluctance to change, Middle Management keep trying to apply a bandaid to the already broken development model. Need to completely readdress the SDLC.
- Customers are becoming increasingly frustrated as development is not being completed. The management team have no intention of scheduling the vast majority of what has been requested for development, but keep a hypothetical 'carrot on a stick' for customers with broken promises along the way
- The "We'll fix it later" mentality is pretty bad. The 'best of breed' software is riddled with bugs, issues and inconsistencies
- Customers are being promised things that aren't realistically going to be completed in any reasonable timeframe
- The product has severe issues. It needs serious development from a UI/UX side of things. Simple functions such as creating a new user or updating access rights are far too complex and time consuming
: Company Issues :
- Holiday policy restricts you take holiday within Westminister term dates
- Disregard for employee morale and mental health
- Lack of communication from the upper management, lack of trust on all levels of the business
- Staff Feedback and Staff Questionnairre that result in nothing, not even a discussion or acknowledgement of business issues
- No progression steps, no career
- Toxic atmosphere across the business. Teams are under a lot of pressure handling an increasing mountain of dissatisfied customers
- No option to grow, no personal development
- Bottlenecks everywhere, individuals (rather than teams) are responsible for important decisions