Pros
Shine is one of the best consulting firms I've worked with in a long time now. The company is 21 years old and has slightly over 100 employees across Melbourne (HQ) and Sydney. Sydney office is approaching its 2nd anniversary now in 2019. Shine has a very flat organisational structure and is predominantly a delivery focussed, software development company. The company fosters a culture of technical excellence, curiosity, learning and innovation, embracing failures and encouraging experimentation.
Core values are Innovation, high quality deliverables, being upfront and honest with clients, always suggesting what's in the client's best interests, and staying highly skilled in craft through constant learning and applying new skills learnt. I've generally seen Shiners strive to live by the core values in day to day dealings. Most Shiners actively blog, participate in hackathons, speak at events, publish white papers and give the company a prominent image of attracting quality talent. Shiners also give back to society by contributing to open source community and universities. Shine hosts several tech meetups such as Google Developer Group events in Sydney and Melbourne and also has booths at premium Google and AWS events such as NextIO and Reinvent. Shiners get to attend, present and represent at all such events at company's expense.
Even the company's directors are technically hands-on and engage in coding, solution-design and technical problem solving on a daily basis. I had 4 rounds of interview and all were 100% technical, including the one with a Director. Senior management has a great connection with the staff and embraces suggestions warmly. With a very well defined vision and successful leadership, Shine has retained renown clients for long term and continues to attract great new clients. Most projects are long-term with established teams with site leaders.
Work culture is very professional, with a strong emphasis on learning.
Self training and certification costs are reimbursed and all staff get 1 additional week of paid leave every year for learning, going to meetups/events, and speaking or attending conferences. Typically companies focus on billing consultants and send them to projects even when they don't have the key skills. However, Shine chooses to invest time & budget on training staff to prepare them for projects with niche technologies and really work hard to get exactly those kind of projects.
Most projects are Cloud, Big Data, Machine Learning and AI based, typically on AWS and GCP. Shine is AWS partner and one of the only 2 Google Cloud Premium partners in Australia. Shine has led the way in big data and analytics with some pretty cool projects for big Australian companies including Telstra, NAB and EnergyAustralia. Some of the staff are data scientists with PhDs in statistical and data analytics fields.
There are other generous perks and benefits, flexible work arrangements, swags, etc. Several catered company events, family day, Christmas and new year events, etc. Overall Shine is a great place to work with brilliant minds, a very supportive and collegial environment to learn and apply those skills on real world projects.
I recommend Shine as a great place to work.
Cons
Might sound surprising, but I haven't really come across any worth mentioning so far!
Just sad that such a nice company is not equally famous...
