Problem leadership spoils great company - Senior Tech Manager Simply Business Employee Review

2.0
14 Aug 2025
Recommend
CEO approval
Business outlook

Pros

Great diversity in this company - many women in senior positions, support for the LGBTQ+ community and an inclusive approach to neurodivergence and people with disabilities. Good company-wide culture of recognising and rewarding employees through the “Kudo$h” system, staff awards, celebratory company events. At times the positivity was genuinely uplifting. Many hard-working, smart colleagues focussed on doing a great job. Exciting tech platform, good hybrid working culture, excellent scale up potential (sadly not being executed well enough at senior level)

Cons

Management at the top of Shared Services created a tense and intimidating culture, senior staff hired and then unceremoniously fired, demonstrating seriously poor judgement. They introduced agile development practices in the company with no experience or understanding of how to scale them, alongside poorly conceived metrics. This led to chaos, increasingly poor code quality and misdirected investments. What should have been a fantastic experience working in a tech-enabled scale up instead became a toxic experience - senior managers increasingly fearful to speak out. Persisted for years and hadn’t been addressed by the CEO/People Team by the time I left.

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Simply Business Response
10mo
Thank you for taking the time to share your feedback. We appreciate your positive comments about our diverse and inclusive culture, our employee recognition system, and our dedicated colleagues. We are incredibly proud of the culture we've built and are committed to maintaining an environment where everyone feels valued and supported. We're equally proud of the significant progress we've made in modernising our platform. Our focus on agile development has been instrumental in our ability to bring new products to market quickly and respond to customer needs at a rapid pace. We've always believed in a culture built on trust, respect, and autonomy and are disappointed to hear you feel your experience became toxic – this doesn't chime with our expectations, and is something we'd love to explore further. We will share your comments with our leadership team and would welcome further conversation if you're open to speaking with a member of our People Team.

Explore other reviews about Simply Business

5.0
18 May 2026
Recommend
CEO approval
Business outlook

Pros

Great company to work for

Cons

none, generally a very good company to work for

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Simply Business Response
1mo
Thank you so much for taking the time to share your experience with us! Thank you for being a part of our journey for over five years, and we wish you nothing but the absolute best in your next chapter.
2.0
13 May 2026
Recommend
CEO approval
Business outlook

Pros

Great work life balance and vacation time....

Cons

Many internal issues and felt like this last round of layoffs was to protect inadequate leaders vs hardworking employees. I understand companies do layoffs but this just felt like Senior management trying to protect themselves because they aren't doing an effective job. I really think there are some issues with the leadership team and it probably needs an overhaul. There was never any strategy from product outside of one small area. The rest of the business was left without any guidance or support. I really think the US/UK shared services model does not work. The UK and US just are entirely different markets and the UK at the end of the day doesn't really care about the US nor move as quickly.

3
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Simply Business Response
1mo
Thank you for sharing your feedback and perspective on your experience. We understand that organizational changes and layoffs can create frustration and uncertainty, and we appreciate you taking the time to share with us the areas where you feel we can improve. Transparency, communication, and supporting our teams continue to be important areas of focus for us.
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