Flexible Working - Developer Hookson Employee Review

Nice office, central location in Edinburgh. They did win some prestigious pitches so they do have some interesting projects to work on. There is occasionally a dog in the office if you like animals.

The managing director ( who the firm is named after ) can be very difficult to work with due to his micro management style of interacting with the small team. It wasn't uncommon to be dressed down in front of colleagues several times a week which was humiliating and unnecessary. This made the working environment somewhat volatile and made the culture in the office stressful and on a knife edge. Hookson don't have the strategic wherewithal to implement digital projects successfully, which is a shame as they do win some interesting ones. They are a branding agency who are interested in profiting by rolling out as many websites or apps as they can in the shortest amount of time. Don't work there if you're interested in quality, they're all about quantity, so the onus is making something look good rather than something that is good. There is little work life balance as the managing director would contact you in the evenings and weekends about project statuses and updates.

In my time at the company I was given a huge amount of dedicated mentoring and coaching support by the management team. That allowed me to really grow my technical skills in a way I haven’t been able to do before. The office has a great working environment and the team is very welcoming.

None really in my experience. Being in an agency environment can mean having to re-prioritise at short notice to meet client requirements, but that’s a good life skill to develop!