FutureLearn Reviews

Cons - A major strategic pivot or re-org is always just a quarter away, which makes it impossible to feel settled, apply learnings, or build on previous work. Job security still a major concern. - Internal comms are a bit of a mess, with each exec having a slightly different take to mission/vision, strategy, OKR delivery, operations. The need for a Chief Executive steer couldn’t be clearer - Salary reviews and progression being withheld despite immense demand for online education globally and rising pressure to deliver internally. - Middle and senior management in some cases have less domain knowledge/expertise than their teams but also somehow neither have basic managerial competencies or experience, diminishing team morale as well as productivity, innovation, and results. Also puts line reports in very awkward positions during progression talks - Managerial roles crafted around personalities, not business needs. Make people accountable. Discourage peacocking, vanity metrics, and show staff that results and good work count - Virtually no legitimate opportunities for progression. Managers seem to have no say over progression while simultaneously HR have no actual systems in place to enable this. - Passionate and good employees have been leaving the company, so it makes you wonder who’s left behind in teams and what kind of culture is emerging as a result - People are leaving for Coursera, but the same can’t be said for FutureLearn.

- Constant change, producing mountains of technical debt. - Good people regularly get frustrated and leave, often joining competitor companies and no-one tries to stop them. - Senior management have no strategy except to copy Coursera's products, agree to the board's frankly ludicrous targets, and tell staff to work faster or 'smarter'. - Developers, Product Managers and Designers are frequently moved between product teams, their work unfinished and their efforts wasted. You'll never have time to get to grips with the code/project you're meant to be working on before you get yanked away onto something else. - Nothing ever gets beyond MVP before the focus moves on. There are fundamental user-facing features that haven't been touched since the company launched in 2013, even though everyone acknowledges it's rubbish and users constantly tell us so. - Product leadership has been weak for years; lots of new blood has arrived in the Exec and they wants to change priorities, yet again. They think they have all the answers, but ignore years of wisdom, experience and insight into what has been tried before. - The founding CEO is leaving (is already AWOL at time of writing) so there will be another 6-12 months of churn - I'd advise against joining the company until the dust settles in, say, late 2021.