Pros
Nice office, relaxed atmosphere (depending on the project). Good external image (I think). Some great people but unfortunately some bullies too (mid & senior level).
Cons
No technical leadership here, I've basically stood still on the tech skills front & the pace for change (if there is any) is poorly communicated, decided by a few and no real change happens. Five years at Eckoh feels like 2 years of actual experience, as the work is much of the same, you tend to get pigeon holed here as a developer. Communication has dried up in recent years, the 'family feel' has crumbled as the head count has increased & expanded into the US (where senior management's attention now lies). Bi-annual company meetings, used to be more frequent a few years ago. The language from senior management is 'them and us', feels like a two tier system. One or two people here, in some 'bridging' roles between departments / to clients, are tyrants but always live to see another day. Those individuals have no customer focus, delaying projects purely due to their own insecurities / neuroticism to control processes and people. Ridiculous procedure to get code to UAT & production. Requires devs to produce Word documents and tickets with instructions for servers you aren't allowed to touch! The IT department have too much say on how devs build technical solutions, more variety in tools and tech would save a lot of development time. There's little time for mentoring or to be mentored on projects, you are normally dropped into projects, told to start coding, without a spec / flakey word docs for requirements and then held accountable when the solution isn't right. Clients can change their mind and it is difficult to prove otherwise, as the specs don't exist or lack detail. Communication from senior management has been patronising around financial year end, when the internal message is "we can't pay bonuses, as we need to meet our numbers" but then the external message to the city is "yay, double digit growth!". On an individual basis you feel powerless to influence the outcome. Teams aren't pulling together (certainly between departments).
