Started out great, but rapid expansion has hurt the company
Pros
Work: If you get a good workstream, it can be really rewarding - a lot of the work going on in the public sector does make a difference to people, and to be involved in that is great. Benefits: Some good benefits are available, like unlimited holidays, friday lunches, the occasional social, and extended parental leave (but even then some of these benefits are getting eroded over time) Culture: There are lots of really great individuals at Made Tech who are really willing to share their knowledge and help you out at the drop of a hat. I met some fantastic people there that I'm still in touch with now.
Cons
Work: If a delivery is bad, it can be extremely bad; often teams are left to work on projects with little understanding of the context around it or the expectations of the customers. This can be incredibly frustrating, especially when this is fed back to the account teams and ignored, leaving teams to struggle to deliver outcomes successfully. Struggling like this for long periods of time, especially when coupled with the pandemic, has left many people burned out. You have little say on what deliveries you go on; in theory you have the ability to decline to join a delivery, but it will negatively impact your career. Benefits: On paper, these are great, but over time there have been a lot of new restrictions added to them that really reduce their value. Such as: * no longer protecting learning time, meaning you basically have to choose between a holiday and spending time learning * Holidays are "unlimited" unless you decided you want to leave the company - then they're capped at 23 days, pro-rated. If you've already taken more than that, you have to pay it back out of your final paycheque Progression: Moving your career forward can be extremely difficult at Made Tech; promotions live and die by the head of your region, so there's an inherent bias to their decisions. It also means that someone who is good at self-promotion to your regional market principal will have a far easier time getting promoted, whereas more introverted employees may be stuck at the same level for extended periods of time. In addition, the success of a delivery is often placed on the individuals working that delivery, who may not have much control over the parameters of it as that is often handled by a separate account team. The result of this is that the people on a delivery are held most accountable while having little ability to influence it's success, while the reverse is true for account-level folks. Diversity: While I was at Made Tech there was very little action in the D&I space - most of it was left to employee-led focus groups, who tried very hard to help the business improve, but were often ignored, and at times outright refused to invest in D&I. Culture: The shift to remote working has negatively damaged the Made Tech culture; people became siloed in their deliveries and rarely interacted with people outside of their workstreams, so there isn't much of a culture remaining, to speak of. In some regions, there is a strong focus on drinking, particularly in the office on Friday afternoons, which can be alienating to non-drinkers.
