Pros
Some great benefits like a gym subsidy, Perkbox, Bonusly and Medicash, as well as social events and parties. Really lovely colleagues on the whole. The Academy programme is very good - you do learn a lot, make a great bond with those you train with, and are exposed to some very passionate and knowledgeable senior staff. It's a very exciting few weeks but it is not indicative of what you can expect once you 'graduate'. Gav is the only person that will actually listen to people properly and at least try to change things, if only the business had more people like him in charge. Thank you Gav. :)
Cons
In short, I uprooted my entire life for Ten10 and was mis-sold the work I would be doing along with the pace of my progression. The staff turnover is increasing, the company no longer has a balance between experienced staff you can learn from and fresh graduates from the academy - the majority of staff are now (unhappy) graduates. The Ten10 website states you can expect the following from The Academy: 1. Initial 5 week intensive training course & ongoing development. The initial training is great but does come with a hefty set of golden handcuffs, ~£10k at the moment. There is no ongoing development. You start work and that's it - which is fine as that's what a normal job is but don't tell young excited grads they can expect more! 2. 2 years’ on-the-job training with mentoring and structured development programme Not sure what this means. There are a few online courses Ten10 you can do if you want. Mentoring is there if you seek it/know who to seek it from. There is not a structured development programme after The Academy. There isn't really any on-the-job training, you either get a run-down of your project from the other analysts you're working with or if you're by yourself on a project then little to no help; but again, this is no different than the on-boarding you would get in a normal job. 3. Acquire an industry standard qualification (ISTQB) You do get this one!!!!! 4. Opportunity to work on a variety of technologies, methodologies and tools This one seems to be holding up too. 5. A dedicated career manager to find out where your skillset fits best in to our business You do get a career manager and on the whole they are good. It is up to you to make the most of them. How long that career manager will stay in the business is another matter entirely though. Your skillset doesn't really matter to the business, you just get sent wherever. 6. Exploration and training on a range of subject areas including; development life-cycle, architecture, consultancy / leadership / coding / project management Bits of this is taught in The Academy and that's it. 7. Work with an impressive mix of household brands in Finance Services, Gaming, Public Sector (inc. major Government programmes) and more… Yeah, okay. You can have this one. 8. Fast-track consultancy career model driven by your own personal performance NOPE. It's not fast tracked, your attainment is not taken into consideration, you're a bum to be sent to a seat and then mostly ignored. Regardless of your own personal ambition and steps taken to prove yourself, you are held back by arbitrary 'time at level' guidelines and there's isn't really much to distinguish between people that exhibit real potential and those who are happy to tread water.