All of TPP’s problems can be traced back to its CEO, Frank Hester. The man is deeply insecure and wants nothing more than a band of kowtowing drones to feed his ego. It’s apparent that Frank has few people to associate with outside of work and longs to make friends with his employees, though the feeling is rarely mutual. Several employees have spoken of late-night phone calls from him, which never have anything to do with actual work, but rather whatever happens to be on Frank’s mind. This alone would be a sizeable invasion of privacy, but throw in the fact that Frank is often intoxicated and/or looking to dig up dirt on whichever employee he is currently suspecting of dissent and you're looking at a CEO with absolutely no concept of what’s appropriate. Not only does Frank often make racist or sexist “jokes”, but he revels in his Trumpian filter and expects you to laugh alongside him. Failure to comply can be seen as grounds for dismissal. Virtually none of the longstanding employees engage in non-mandatory company social events, presumably to avoid having to socialise with Frank and risk getting on his bad side, however unintentional it may be.
TPP maintains that it has a flat hierarchy, which is half true. There are no managers, only employees and a handful of directors. More senior employees’ opinions will, perhaps naturally, be considered with more weight, but you can approach most anyone you need to at any time and they will generally listen to what you have to say. However, some of the more senior employees and directors have some sort of superiority complex and it shows. Their word is final and their reasoning on matters is usually little more than “this is the way we’ve always operated”. Such reluctance to change is frustrating at best and detrimental to the company at worst. It’s a common occurrence to see a director or senior employee openly berating another employee, which fosters an environment where disrespect is seen as par for the course. The directors themselves answer only to Frank, who himself mistreats them, thus completing the pyramid of abuse. Speaking up about any of this can be seen as a reason to sack you, which brings me to my next point.
The turnover rate is absolutely abysmal. Since September 2017, there were probably around 100 new hires across all departments. At a push, maybe 15 remain at the time of writing. On top of this, the largest team, the coders, has plummeted from around 70 to 25 in three years. The reason for this egregious loss of life is, you guessed it, Frank. He boasts how he once attended a talk and appeared to be the only attendee to agree when the speaker suggested that any employee who is not right for the company should be terminated. Sadly, it seems that Frank has mistaken “the company” for “Frank” and will ruthlessly sack anybody who is even suspected of being against him in any way. You are fully expendable, and Frank will admit as much, often bragging that he only requires 14 employees to keep the business afloat. Perhaps for every three employees that are sacked, one leaves of their own volition, but of the twenty such people I’ve spoken to, none would recommend TPP as a nice place to work.
Employees are often asked to write company reviews during work hours, including here on Glassdoor and for The Sunday Times Top 100 Small Companies to Work For award, which TPP are now banned from entering. While I can’t prove that several of these reviews are written by the same people, the similar rhetoric found time and time again would seem to suggest they are (perhaps there will be more verbose 5-star reviews dated after this review?). As for non-duplicate reviews, nobody will risk writing anything negative about the company at work for fear that a wandering director may spot it and end their employment on the spot.
One of the perks listed here often is a good work-life balance. While it’s true that less than 40 hours a week is pretty reasonable for the salary that is offered, you are expected to be on call 24/7. This applies to some teams more than others, but suffice to say it’s hard not to think about work outside of work when it could phone you at any time. Given how many bugs make it into production code, late-night conference calls are not an uncommon occurrence. Coders get reimbursement for any hours they work outside of normal working hours, but the same can not be said for other teams, such as software support specialists or clinical systems analysts. The only reason I can think of for why this is the case is that most of the directors (Frank included) used to be coders themselves, so coders get special treatment.
Many compare TPP to a cult, and for good reason. You are expected to pledge your unwavering allegiance to the company and to be a conduit through which the directors can enact their will. In your first week you will be taught more about the company’s idiosyncratic way of working than how to actually be a {insert job role here}. Not only that, but you are told to call others out when they make any sort of slip-up, creating a kind of autocratical informant culture. Certain types of mistake, such as writing bugs or failing to lock up, are rectified by publicly outing yourself to the rest of the company via email. Unsurprisingly, this does nothing to stop such mistakes happening again, but rather just makes people feel bad and causes unnecessary stress. Directors demand employees inform them immediately if they enter into a relationship with another employee. Their reason for making you do so is so they can make sure you don’t work on the same project to avoid distractions, but they expect this level of admission from any and all employees, regardless of how likely it is that their teams will ever work together. Employees have spoken about being interrogated regarding who they are friends with, because fraternising with ex-employees is a big no-no. I imagine the real reason for such an unsettling interest in employees’ personal lives is to have as much ammunition as possible against them once they unwittingly get on the directors’ bad side. Constant surveillance also bleeds into TPP’s way of working: you are encouraged to update your colleagues with what you are doing on a regular basis, as well as how long you think that task will take. While this may seem sensible on paper, in practice it means you’ll need a towel ready to wipe away all the moisture from your teammates breathing down your neck every ten minutes. Due to the very nature of estimation, you’ll essentially be setting your self several miniature deadlines a day and meeting very few of them. Therefore, you’ll go through many work days stressed and finish them feeling like you’ve failed.
The atmosphere at TPP is very much that of a sheltered community. Many ex-employees are branded as “toxic” and are slandered in company meetings, with directors encouraging employees to bad-mouth people who were once their colleagues and whom they may still be in contact with. You are flat-out not allowed to socialise with those who used to work at TPP and being suspected of as much is enough to get you fired. If that doesn’t sound like a cult I don’t know what does. I suspect the primary reason that TPP predominantly hires graduates with no prior experience is because established industry professionals would instantly spot all the weird stuff that happens on a daily basis and leave soon after. This lack of context is further amplified by the fact that only a few computers in the office have access to the internet; apparently TPP employees know best when it comes to any questions you may have and searching the internet for answers is a last resort.
Much of TPP’s reluctance to change stems from their deluded belief that they are the best company in the world. Frank recently claimed that the company was worth over £1 billion, which appears to be a gross overestimate if one takes a look at their public accounts. Company meetings are often filled with tirades about other organisations and how much worse than TPP they are. This same air of superiority extends to the way customers are treated, often being looked down upon as nuisances for whom only the bare minimum should be done. More evidence of TPP’s we-know-best attitude has surfaced during the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic. TPP has refused to follow government guidelines, requiring every single employee to come into the office every day, despite being in a sector that is perhaps best suited to working remotely. TPP has never invested in any infrastructure to support working from home and still has no interest in doing so, regardless of potential health risks to its employees. Frank loves to gloat about how much money the company makes, but is clearly not willing to use any of it to improve the lives of their employees past the odd event that looks good on social media. When questioned about their handling of COVID-19 by the Yorkshire Evening Post, TPP gave a limp excuse that staff have to work in the office, as the servers need to be extremely quick. Not only is this just untrue, as I’m sure would be evident to anyone who knows what a server is, but even if it was, surely it wouldn’t require every employee from every team to be in the office? To make matters worse, employees were not allowed to take their lunch break in the office during the pandemic, thus causing unnecessary foot traffic in the local area, potentially endangering its residents.
Many of the above points compound on one another to create an environment of unspoken fear. Any day could be your last, as somebody is sacked up to once a week. To drive the point home, here is a list of outlandish reasons people have been sacked from TPP, in no particular order:
- Complaining about how something is handled or suggesting that something could be improved
- Not divulging aspects of their personal life
- Being friends with ex-employees
- Looking at Frank wrong
- Being uncomfortable around Frank
- Showing any sign of weakness during a stressful event
- Being suspected of any of the above without any actual evidence
For the sake of transparency, I don’t know TPP’s reasons for sacking everyone that they have, but the vast majority that I have spoken to fall under the above categories. Others have been sacked for the reason that they didn’t own up to mistakes or were defensive when questioned about something. While this may be TPP’s most valid reason for dismissal, it usually happens with those who have been employed for less than a year. The oppressive atmosphere does nothing to help such people feel comfortable and firing somebody after one mistake rather than taking action to help them improve is cold and cutthroat.
The rest of the cons will cover the more technical aspects of working at TPP as a coder.
You will be taught the basics of writing code and several good coding practices, but that's about it. Even the things they do teach you are drip-fed to you as and when you need to know them, so it’s really luck of the draw as to what you’ll pick up in your time at TPP. You will never be given time to just sit and read up on a concept. Apparently teaching you on such a need-to-know basis saves time, but ironically it likely ends up harming more than it helps in the long run, as you’ll constantly be badgering other employees to explain things to you. The codebase itself is ancient and it shows, with many arcane methods that nobody fully understands. This problem will never go away as time is never set aside to give the code the cleaning/refactoring it so desperately needs.
Developers are referred to as coders, because you will learn nothing of the actual software development process. Industry standard practices such as automated testing, modern language features, build pipelines, containers, or modern version control are nowhere to be seen. In fact, the very mention of them is enough to get you sacked, as that would amount to suggesting that Frank isn't the utmost authority when it comes to software development. I had to spend about a month studying various aspects of software development to make experience mean anything elsewhere. Ultimately, TPP teaches you how to work at TPP, which unsurprisingly is not a skill that other companies are looking for. I’d recommend staying for around 6 months to get the basics of how to write code professionally and then using that experience to find employment somewhere better. The job security being what it is, staying any longer means risking being unemployed with a severely stunted skill set for the time that you’ve been working.
