Difficult working environment, although really good product - Anonymous employee Railsr Employee Review

2.0
8 July 2020
Anonymous employee
Recommend
CEO approval
Business outlook

Pros

The product has a lot of traction and a booming industry currently, huge potential for the leading company in this space to create something valuable (not saying Railsbank is the leading company at the moment)

Cons

Management style, complete lack of orientation and direction. As said in a previous review, it is a "friends" network of old-boys and internal promotion and recognition very difficult, it does not work as a start-up, more like an 80s company, once again as stated before Can see the company struggling unless they start aligning their processes as with high growth it can expose their failings

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Railsr Response
5y
As CEO and co-founder I am very sad to read a second post that is of similar comments to the comments posted yesterday by a colleague of yours. Firstly, thank you for your comments on the product, they are very much appreciated and reflect the hard work that the whole team has put into building a great product. Your comments on the leadership team I strongly dispute based on real data. This data being the employee surveys we do, the weekly schedule of one on one meetings that Claire (Head of People) does with the whole company, and that weekly anonymous “pulse” feedback we get from the whole company. We take it very seriously to understand the hearts and minds of our team. If the assertions of your post and your colleague's post yesterday were true, I am certain that we would have heard loud and clear via the various feedback mechanisms described above (or at the very least seen some tells). I will also give feedback on you and your colleague’s assertions of “old boy network” and “lack of orientation and direction”. The other comments do not warrant dealing with as they are factually incorrect. 1. Old Boy Network For background, my co-founder and I have both known each other since we were 13 and are now both 53 - so yes we are “old boys”. I co-founded a company in 1996 where my co-founder ended up working after he left the Royal Navy, our Chief Architect was my then CTO, our CTO was a lead developer / project manager and our current Chief Data Officer, was an MSc. student doing some cryptography work for us. All three of these “old boys” went through a rigorous interview process to ensure we removed any conflict of interest and they remain highly respected members of the Railsbank team - I am confident no-one in the company would dispute that. The leadership team comprises 10 people, of which only the CTO above is a member. Of the 9 others in the leadership team, I never met any of them until Railsbank. The ExCo team comprises 5 people, of whom two are myself and my co-founder. Of the other three in the ExCo, two I never met before Railsbank and the other I have known for a number of years, but he was put through a rigorous interview process (including board members) to remove any conflict of interest. The leadership team and ExCo members hold their positions through merit and high performance and not “old boy network” and cronyism. Their performance is totally transparent to all the company through open access to their respective OKRs. 2. “Lack of orientation” I agree with you that we had lost a little of our sense of direction at the tail end of last year due to growing from 17 to over 120 people in 9 months. That was just a factor of a high growth startup business. Since the end of last year and throughout Q1 this year the leadership team has put an immense amount of effort into ensuring we are all aligned, including implementing OKRs that the whole company has transparent access to and to which the whole company can hold the leadership accountable to. We very much have an aligned leadership team. I 100% respect your right to voice your opinion, but I would respectfully ask you to do it with respect and objectively. The Railsbank team sends our best wishes for your next chapter. Nigel Verdon CEO and co-founder

Explore other reviews about Railsr

5.0
24 Oct 2021
Recommend
CEO approval
Business outlook

Pros

Great Company with Great Culture

Cons

Startup culture is all I have to say. Nothing negative.

1.0
12 May 2022
Anonymous employee
Recommend
CEO approval
Business outlook

Pros

US team is great, US subsidiary is 100% remote

Cons

Salaries are significantly lower than market but the parent company (based in UK) acts as though they're doing you a huge favor when they're claiming a market adjustment and in reality adding few extra pennies. The culture at the parent company is very toxic, women are constantly undervalued, turn over is very high. Communication from the top is terrible and when it does happen, it becomes very obvious that the executive team is oblivious and doesn't understand current market. Mgmt changes responsibilities without taking into account person's experience, then blaming the person for not performing. Promises are made to keep employees from leaving but are consistently not delivered.

6
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Railsr Response
4y
Thank you for taking the time to share your views. I appreciate your feedback and I’m sorry to hear that this experience didn’t work out for you. A number of issues you raise don’t make for easy reading and I take this sort of feedback seriously. I’d like to comment specifically on some of the points: all salaries are benchmarked with local market data to ensure we're providing a competitive remuneration package and the exercise that you refer to, confirmed this. While we can always do more, we’ve been encouraged by the results we see in our employee survey – feedback about managers is on par with the best performing companies. We do trust our management to lead and help employees when in need and to make the best decisions for their teams. Thanks again for your feedback and I wish you all the best in your career. Jenny Trist, Chief People Officer
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