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Hi there,
Thank you for sharing your experience and for the work you put in over the years you were here!
It’s great to see that you felt you had the opportunity to work on projects that contributed to climate change - that’s really what we’re all about and why we come to work everyday! At Octopus you’re part of something - a company that is leading the charge towards Net Zero. Also, with regards to work-life balance, we know working in a fast paced, high performance environment can be challenging, but as a people first business we do our best to give our employees as much flexibility as is feasible (unlimited holiday policy being an example of this).
In regards to the concerns you’ve raised, I’ll try and address each one.
- On pay, you are correct in that the entry level Ops salaries are not the highest in the market, however we do conduct benchmarking exercises every quarter for our Ops function to ensure we stay above industry averages, so we’re certainly not lower than industry standards. This benchmarking occurs factoring in location, so accounts for cost of living differences. We also very quickly increase peoples salaries when they pass probation, often within 6m of being at the business.
- To address your point around high workloads, as mentioned, we don’t shy away from the fact this is a fast paced, ever changing environment as we continue to grow substantially and innovate. There’s always new information to learn and more customers signing up, which drives work, however we continue to hire in line with this to ensure workload for individual ops team members remains consistent. I believe the workload expectations we set for team members are really reasonable.
- On pay progression, we see many of our Ops team members progress onto managerial roles within Operations, specialised roles leading on various areas for their teams, or indeed moving into other parts of Octopus, whether that be OEV, Kraken or somewhere else. We have many ways people can increase their salary here at Octopus. Of course people's salary journeys are unique to them though, so I am sorry if this was something you felt you experienced.
- Finally, you’re right in that there is no structured bonus system, however we do award adhoc bonuses to people for great work, and often run incentive style systems to enable people to earn more outside of their monthly salary. Furthermore, equity in Octopus is incredibly valuable. We were valued at £9 billion in the latest funding round and with all employees owning a part of the business, we will hopefully all benefit long-term from this growth.
I hope I’ve addressed all of your points. Once again, thanks for all your hard work over the years.
Thanks,
Sam Winter
Head of Operations - London