Toxic leadership at the very top rules the day at Babylon. Leaders are arrogant, manipulative and political. Anyone who stands up to leadership will be ignored, blacklisted and/or fired while incompetent people who stroke leadership's egos will be promoted. Leaders frequently said Babylon needed fewer people with healthcare backgrounds, which is very scary when trying to navigate the US healthcare system. It was a frequent occurrence for leadership without US healthcare experience to suggest doing things that anyone with US healthcare experience knows cannot be done under current healthcare regulations. It was difficult to sit through presentations comparing doctors to Uber drivers and patients to Uber riders.
It would not be surprising if Babylon ends up featured in a Harvard business case or a Netflix documentary as an example of what not to do after raising $550 million. The founder wows new employees and investors with product demos that are mocked up and years away from becoming a reality. In the opinion of many Babylon product and engineering team members, the symptom checker is not really "AI". The symptom checker is a rules engine that is filled with bugs and providers have voiced their concern. After fundraising, they rushed to increase their UK office to over 1000 employees. This resulted in the creation of numerous siloed teams building different apps that created disjointed spaghetti code and products that were inferior copycat versions of apps already on the market such as wearable device activity trackers and menstrual cycle trackers.
Finally, Babylon doesn't treat its employees very well. There is a reason that 15% of the US office has resigned since Jan 1 and many more are looking to leave. They promised employees stock options that were included in offer letters and over a year later, they haven't issued a single certificate to any US employees and claim they're still working on it. The health insurance is very expensive, especially if you have a family. They promised performance reviews with raises and bonuses, but almost 18 months in to the US office being open there has not been a single performance review or salary increase discussion. It is a software development company, yet leadership treats employees like school children. Software developers like working flexible hours and the US leader constantly accused people of not working hard enough if they weren't sitting at their desk from 9am-6pm even though many were working late into the evening and on the weekends. In summary, Babylon is not the place to be if you are a great employee.
