I knew the writing was on the wall when I found out that the person who recruited me was half way through his notice period at the time. Then I found out that half the people in my project team had resigned. Then I found out that “half the Dev team” had left in the months leading up to when I was recruited.
Then we had a company town hall meeting where somebody raised the question “what are you going to do to correct the high turnover of staff”.
I sat there thinking, oh shoot; I’ve just got a job on the Titanic; or closer to the point been seduced onto the Marie Celeste by the range of desserts available after dinner.
There are some great people at Blinx with good ideas, but the management focus is on quick and dirty and coding standards and good practices will not be allowed to get in the way of those timescales even if it does improve the customer experience and reliability and maintainability.
This place beats the competition by undercutting the competition on time and cost and then they fail to deliver. Of course, as far as management is concerned, any failure is all the fault of the development team and has nothing to do with management. You will become public enemy number one until everything is fixed and you can expect to fix any issues in your own time with long hours and little in the way of thanks.
Then there’s the meetings. Anybody who’s read Dilbert will quickly recognise that this place is full of pointy haired management. There are so many meetings that if you actually want to get any work done you have to do it in your own time.
But what ‘own time’? Your contracted hours are 9 - 6 with one hour for lunch - and you can bet your bottom dollar that one hour for lunch will be full of meetings.
Oh, and if you keep seeing great reviews by people still working there - it’s written into their contract that they will not publicly embarrass or criticise the company and so it goes without saying that their reviews are amazing.
Indeed, this company has a Rottweiler of a ‘legal counsel’ who writes to you as soon as you even think about pointing out problems. So, no current employee will ever write a bad review.
Now you could call me bitter and accuse me of making it up. I was bitter at first. What a waste of my skills and my life and these guys are masters of subjugation. As soon as you’ve got one foot in the door, your confidence in your own ability is drained from you so that you couldn’t move on if you wanted to. Indeed, one former colleague described the people working there as being victims of Stockholm Syndrome.
Anyway, don’t take my word for it. This is only my opinion after all. Make up your own mind, but listen to your concerns if you have any.
- Look at the history of job adverts - started at £45k and quickly headed up to around double that amount. What does that tell you about their ability to find staff and more importantly, how do you think existing staff will feel if you join on double their salary.
- Have the interview when you get offered it. Ask pertinent questions. Drill them on coding standards, practises, how many projects you will be expected to work on, the induction process. Look for gaps.
- Read the contract when you get it. That contract and the other paperwork will tell you more in the 100+ pages you get given than anything I can tell you.
- when you see it says 9-6 with an hour for lunch - then welcome to the twilight zone.
My best advice - if you accept the job, don’t turn down your other interviews. And book yourself a series of self help and counselling sessions for when you need them - probably 2 weeks in.