Horrible Horrible Horrible - Project Manager Simply Zesty Employee Review

- Great benefits package - death in service, maternity/paternity, private healthcare + more. - Modern office - fresh, clean with stunning views across Belfast Harbour. 10 minute walk into the city centre. - Office layout - teams sat with each other to maximise collaboration and knowledge sharing. - Small development team (at the time) was able to get together monthly to share experiences and knowledge in a friendly way. - Interview process was straightforward - two separate interviews lasting less than an hour long, with no coding challenges. - No pressure to bring work home - able to leave it at the office. - Training provided on technologies. -Interesting clients - many from the tourism industry. Makes for a more engaging project. - Developers quickly gain responsibility over their own projects. - Opportunity to collaborate between front-end and back-end teams. - Suggestions welcomed and taken on board at developer level.

- Some aspects of the technology felt like a bit of a learning cul-de-sac. Depending on your intentions, you could comfortably work here for many years honing a particular skill set, or become tiresome of the scope of some of the projects. - Bureaucracy between the project management side of things versus the development side was a constant bug-bear. - Lack of Agile practices. - Like other digital agencies, there’s a high turnover of staff. Therefore, the general atmosphere can be awkward. Whilst my colleagues were pleasant, helpful and friendly individually, as a group the office felt disjointed and cliquey - something didn’t seem to gel well. - Restrictive working hours - could only work 8-4.30 or 9-5.30 with an hour for lunch, no exceptions. Lunch was set at 12 or 1, too. - Shared office space with another company - can be noisy and distracting. - Paid parking.

Being owned by a larger corporation affords Zesty the ability to offer a lot of perks and features not normally associated with web agencies: On top of a fair salary there are numerous bonuses such as a comprehensive pension package, private healthcare, paid sick days and a lot more. As a company Zesty have also always been very understanding and supportive towards employee's personal needs overlapping with business hours - be it small things like having to work around a car getting serviced to larger asks such as far away funerals. Additionally, and again unlike a lot of other agencies, Zesty have proven to be very respectful of the personal time of their staff with very few unexpected out of hour calls and the like. In essence this is a company that understands, respects, and supports the fact that the people working there have a life outside that work. Finally, another plus is the ability to work from home, if desired, but having the availability of a great office space in central Belfast.

On one hand, as is the nature of larger corporations, change can be slow to materialise. On the other hand, as is the nature of web agencies, work can get a bit hectic on occasion.