9fin Reviews

Micromanagement & nitpicking: The work environment, particularly within the ESG function, felt tightly controlled with little room for autonomy. Excessive focus on minor issues often overshadowed meaningful contributions. Lack of empathy: During a time of severe illness — later diagnosed as tuberculosis — I was met with comments from HR such as “How long will we wait for you?” rather than basic compassion. For a company operating in ESG, the disconnect between external messaging and internal culture was stark and painful. Emotionally immature leadership in ESG: A serious deficit of emotional intelligence within the ESG team’s leadership. Difficult conversations were handled poorly, and psychological safety was not prioritised. Repetitive work: Tasks often felt monotonous, with limited opportunities for creativity, ideation, or strategic thinking. Low impact and lack of inspiration: Despite the buzzwords, there is a vacuum when it comes to truly innovative thinking or visionary leadership. The ESG vertical, in particular, seemed performative rather than purposeful.

Engineering standards are poor, and the leadership don't seem to have much background in high quality engineering. They say they're a tech company, but not really. A good product company hacking around to get features out. Still behaving like an early stage startup, not like a tech company in 2025. Feature factory stuff. Processes are poor. No alignment on DevOps practices, things like observability are given little thought, or at least receive no priority from leadership. Lack of strategic planning, and no real consideration for architectural thinking. Some engineers and managers seem to want to improve this but they're squashed by short term thinking and hype. It's a bit cult like. You have to love the hype and join it, or you'll just be seen as a downer. You'll be happier if you just accept the bad practice and cheer along, because trying to improve things is just too frustrating. You'll be more celebrated this way too. Privately people will discuss everything that's not going well, but publicly it's best to fall in line with the hype train. A lot of it feels very fake. The senior leadership in tech lack hands on skills, but want to tell you how it's done... Lip service around "what makes us a great employer". Seen it with a couple of things - saying all the right things publicly, but then unwilling to back it up when it affects your staff.