Pros
Systal was a good company to work for when I started there six years ago. It was energetic and passionate, and all the teams worked well with each other. There were opportunities to learn and to teach staff new to the sector.
Cons
Then, just over a year ago, they got most of the old EU AT&T contracts from IBM and it's been a mess ever since. Senior management cut teams down, moved people around, went back on promises to staff, myself included, and generally couldn't organise a company on the scale they had gotten involved in. Senior management also like to make decisions that impact the entire company with no prior warning and minimal, if any, opportunity for feedback before the decisions are implemented. Here is an example of a mishandling of teams. A first line team and second line team were merged together to facilitate education and create a stronger path for advancement, but all that happened was the first line team was expected to take on second line tasks that they were not trained for and didn't have the time for self improvement. Systal believing in a "trial by fire" policy for in-work education. Obviously, this was not received well, and the company lost a third of that first-line team in a month. Here is an example of a failure to manage the communication of business decisions. The Glasgow HQ team is housed in a secure office, or at least they were. One Thursday, the senior manager told the NOC teams (thats 1st, 2nd, and 3rd line support, as well as a problem management team) that the office would be changed to a SOC for the new security team they hadn't even employed yet, and that everyone's kit and personal belongings needed to be out of the secure office and into the wider office space by the next Monday. It took another 2 months for that security team to reach even half strength, and I'm told they mostly help out the 1st and 2nd line teams because there is so little for them to do.