Working at Spidergap has been a huge quality of life upgrade
Pros
- Genuine commitment to work-life balance as evidenced by the very generous annual leave, sickness, and parental leave policies! - Genuine commitment to employee wellbeing as evidenced by the gym contribution, book allowance, and regular coaching calls! - Culture of positivity, transparency, and openness. We give honest critical feedback as well as enthusiastic praise for a job well done. This results in an environment where constructive criticism flows freely and no-one gets upset, in fact we thank each other for the opportunity to improve! This is a no BS culture that ultimately strengthens relationships and makes us all better at what we do. - You get to work with talented and charismatic people who you can learn from and laugh with. - Because the company is small you are required to do a diversity of different tasks. If you like variety this is a pro! I get to learn about things besides my primary role like good customer support, design, analysis, data security, and product development in general. - The founders are not just my bosses, they are mentors and friends who I believe genuinely care about my personal development and wellbeing. They inspire me and challenge me to be better. - My ideas are taken seriously and often result in change to our practices. My superiors trust me and are constantly trying to find ways to better empower me and give me more freedom in what I do. - Willing to invest in nice tooling and try new technologies.
Cons
- Because the company is small you are required to do a diversity of different tasks. If you don't like variety this is a con! You might just love coding and then realise you don't get to do as much as you might at larger companies with more dedicated development resources. - Sometimes what I consider industry-standard software development practices are not in place and meet resistance when introduced to the team. As mentioned in the pros they are very receptive to ideas and change so this is usually not much of a problem but there are still some sticking points. - The company relies on manual processes a lot and is hesitant to invest time in automation. Although the manual processes themselves are very well refined and supported this can still lead to some tedious and time-consuming tasks. - A lot of importance is placed on personal development which is a good thing but the goals set can sometimes lead to pressure to work late which contradicts the company's "enjoy the journey" core value. This can easily be solved by being more data-driven about the goals set to make them more realistic (and I'm confident this will eventually be addressed).