• We became a ˈmē-ˈtü company instead of the vision to be a market leader.
• Definitely not a competitive salary and not adjusted for inflation. I had to beg for pay raises for the first time in a technology company. My new job is £26k more with a host of benefits. Mindtrace is no longer competitive. Other UK software companies are benchmarking with US companies. Most of the staff are young. There’s no barrier to moving to the US to get 2x or even 3x the salary.
• No additional benefits other than stock options. Other companies give free parking, snacks, lunch, rest/welfare rooms, break out areas, gym membership, laptop, home office contribution.
• No medical, private healthcare or dental.
• No Life Insurance despite it being promised as far back as 2018 for staff
• You have to supply your own Laptop and use your own mobile phone. There’s no insurance in case they get broken. No contribution towards the wear and tear or the cost of your electricity at home. The answer you get when you ask about it is “come into the office”. But there’s no one there. The air conditioning and heating has been turned off to save money. The only meeting room is locked. When it’s not locked, it’s being used. I have never had to supply my own hardware before. When I raised that I needed to upgrade my device for a new Mac, I was told to claim it back from my tax allowance.
• Never given enough time to finish a project, flip-flop from one thing to the next. Is it any wonder we don’t have customers.
• Lost its vision a few years ago.
• This is the only technology company that I have worked for that had no set values, despite efforts from employees to define them, idea don’t get listened to.
• Unclear purpose and vision - we were developing cutting edge AI, yet projects seemed to be unrelated to each other, lacked research because the ML researchers had all left.
• Many projects lacked longevity, short-termism is definitely an issue.
• Some projects lacked direction from higher up.
• All the best talent has left, new recruits have just Bachelor’s degree and limited experience in ML. The core used to be PhD’s with university researcher time served.
• Many projects lacked longevity, short-termism is definitely an issue.
• Equipment provided to engineers was not in line with my expectations. A lot of staff seemed to be working on personally-owned machines at home.
• Original founders of the company left some time ago, there was only a couple of the founding team there when I left.
• No learning budget or assistance for maintaining skills and qualifications. Other companies give at least £1,000 a year for books, training courses and conferences. We are not allowed to attend any of there.
•Annual leave is just poor. I was surprised to see the average time on offer for the roles I was looking at were 30 days a year plus bank holidays and you can buy additional days. Or, if you’d rather work on bank holidays you can take those days at another time. At my current company some staff can get three months’ unpaid leave per year. Mindtrace is not competitive and the view of management is you get nothing in the US.
• Top management is uninspiring. We used to have a clear corporate vision that included everyone being taken along and buying into the process. Now decisions chop and change so often, new directions are announced after the event.
• Felt as though neither the CEO nor my manager respected our views, experience or ideas. Felt as though I was not listened to by management on many occasions.
• It is clear that the top does not care about GDPR, internal and external names and addresses are shared. The management has to be copied into everything.
• No structure in place for career progression, everyone starts and finishes at the same level. When you mention in reviews that you are only using 40% of your skill-sets, you are given a new title, but it’s the same job. This has been a thing since 2019.
• The company was founded in the UK, all the staff are UK based apart from the CEO who is in California, therefore there’s late meetings here in the UK. When you start work at 7am, the last thing you need is meeting on video late into the night, plus terse emails late into the night, our work life balance could be better.
• No HR, consequently your personal and private data is being shared around different colleagues who have been asked to “deal with it”.
• Culture changed from a British/European company to American where if you don’t like it leave. No longer did we operate on“let’s find a solution”, in the past few years it became “do it this way or be fired”.
• Too many group meetings every day, most with manager invited, felt like constant reporting of progress. The day could lose 2-3 hours with various nothing “meetings”. You would then be working late to make sure you hit the daily targets.
• Never see the other directors or advisors. Despite some being leaders in their field.
• Management practices are completely unimpressive, no one has heard of the “Good Employer handbook” or how European companies treat their workforce”. In the past few years we have become Americanised. Bank holidays and annual leave is met with derision.
• Overall this was my worst job experience, ever. I would advise to stay well clear!
I have seen other reviews that state there’s bonus payments and perks. I question this review because no one gets anything other than stock options and they are a very poor reflection compared to what US tech companies get. Even then you lose everything if you leave. When we saw the two reviews dated early 2022, everyone in the office was asking if they had posted them. The team is small. At that time, we only had 16 engineers, it is not as if there are 40-60 engineers and you may not know people that well.
Mindtrace had such a brilliant idea from its founding and everybody was excited about how we were going to change the world. The importance that management need to see is from where the company started, to where it is now from enthusiasm, optimism and an outlook or let’s make something different. This changed and it hurts. It hurts, especially when moved to another software company, and these things that I’ve noted as missing or a ‘Cons”, are just provided as a matter of course.
When I tell my new colleagues what it was like they are surprised people are there and that hurts because every person who joined Mindtrace were invested 100% in the company. We all shared that one vision from the founders and sadly when they were kicked out, this was just knocked out of the company and out of the people in it. That’s why not a quarter went by where one was surprised that another key member handed their resignation in. Add insult to injury. We were then treated like lepers instead of being allowed to work your notice through your instantly cut and not even given the time to say goodbye on the internal system now we’re not talking of people on minimum wage who don’t have the same investment in the education and professional standing. I spent over 10 years in university learning and researching my subjects. I have glowing references from every company. I work for, all for Mindtrace because my current employers tell me they asked for a reference several times without success, constantly having emails ignored when you’ve invested that much time in your professional standing, you don’t decide to start smashing the place up or wrecking what you’ve worked for so I question why the management now chooses to bundle you effectively out the door. It’s not nice it doesn’t feel right and to be frank, it’s about summarises the attitude of top management in the company towards the staff. I love the people that the company, we would have so many bright discussions, and we were all on the same page, however one and then two changes in the company’s management, and it’s all thrown away such a pity
