When the CEO doesn't: LISTEN to you, OVERWORKS you, doesn't TRUST you, puts your CAREER in jeopardy = it's time to QUIT
Pros
Prenetics has a good mix of both international and local Hong Kong people. A good balance of male and female gender ratio. There are a lot of young people, so if you just graduated from university, you’ll feel right at home. They like to throw big grand events with free food, free alcohol, and free costumes to wear to attend some big Xmas party. Fun and exciting stuff. A foosball and beer pong table to play against your colleagues inside the office. The people there are very nice. You can easily claim reimbursements. Some colleagues are into health and fitness, so you can join up together to go to the gym or watch a movie, hike, eat out. You know, just chill dude. The CEO likes to invite people to drink at the pantry on Friday nights, a good day to cool off at the end of the week. If you are working overtime and he's working overtime as well, he'll order uber eats or just invite you to dinner at some yum cha. CEO invites famous people to the office to give a speech and inspire people to start their own business. Free Friday Lunches. Whoopee!
Cons
To a certain degree, the CEO is a good person. A very good speaker, a good salesman, a good businessman who knows how to get new contracts, new partnerships, and grow the damn business. He’s quite talented in this field. And I have to say, some of the things he has done impress me. However, this ambitious CEO is too ambitious for his own good. He wants to do more, like superman. Wants to have more control. And that means becoming a dictator. And when that line has been crossed into our territory, our career profession, red flags start to appear. We simply became robots following orders. Because he pays our salary and we have no right to refuse. We know the impact it’ll have on the team, the results when the product is launched, and guess what? despite being aware of the problems, the CEO doesn’t want to solve this problem, wants to keep things as it is. And that is really really sad. Prenetics is a good company. They have the resources, the people and the culture that makes everything so great to work there. But when you’re not learning anything, when you feel like you’re not progressing in your career, when simply your voice is ignored, you become demotivated. You just don’t know what you’re doing anymore. Are you even making a positive impact on society? Isn’t that what we should be doing? To make the world a better place? How does it feel to spend 1 month making a DNA collection kit and have all the customers complain about how confusing the instructions were to follow? How does it feel to make an app and have everyone complain about how bad the design was? You feel pretty crappy right? It’s not because you’re a bad designer, it’s just someone doesn’t want to listen to you. And you can't help but feel responsible for the outcome. I mean it is your project. It'll be extremely difficult to get hired by another potential employer who does care about good design and does want someone with experience to consult them on how to guide their business forward. Because their app or their website is their business. The better UX it has, the higher the Return on Investment, reflects greatly on you. That means increased customers, increased sales, higher engagement, etc. But at Prenetics, you simply have no room in your career to experiment, test, nor learn. And that is why you will leave as well.