Your experience may vary but here are the cons from my personal experience working there:
Organisation
- For a company of 5-6 years, there isn't any structure/legacy/system.
- They use a Google Doc to keep track of tasks, no Jira/Kanban/Asana boards.
- No documentation.
- Employees are discouraged from using external resources e.g. task tracking software like Asana, or organisational tools like Notion. There is no company wide knowledge base or source of truth/previous work.
- Employees are discouraged from using Slack as it is "distracting".
- Lied in JD and in interview, role was advertised as 3-4 days in office and CEO confirmed this in interview. Role was actually not hybrid, was on site including travel to clients (although tube travel is paid for with a travel card). Some flexibility exists for rare wfh days but will be met with passive aggressive comments about "laundry" or "meal prepping".
- No leadership structure - most senior engineer has been here 5 years, remaining 2 staff members have been present for less than 8 months. No one leading the team or ensuring that engineers on projects are informed about their respective projects / requirements.
Coding/Work
- AI work is simple because you are not making/training your own LLMs, only using LangGraph which is more or less like using an API
- Technically complex work is dismissed as too complicated, use of APIs exclusively is encouraged. It is also not appreciated, CEO does not value this type of work.
- JD did not reflect tech stack actually used.
- You won't be trusted with most credentials so expect to waste half of your day because your .env file doesn't have the correct variables or your AWS account is not set up with the appropriate credentials.
- Poor communication, engineers aren't informed of what is happening in the company or with clients which means that you barely have enough context for the tasks assigned. Also you won't be informed when things change so people are rarely on the same page.
- CEO regularly over promising to clients and overselling the progress on projects which spills down to staff to deliver projects in a short turnaround. Also means there is a frequent backlog and catch up to meet customer expectations.
Culture
- Staff members talk about women in a condescending, sexualised way. This is constant and unavoidable as everyone has to work from the office. Also everyone makes microaggressive sexist comments.
- No second chances here, if they perceive something you do as wrong, you're out. No feedback is provided to explain why and there are no efforts to see if things will change. This led to two outcomes that actually happened:
- First outcome: firing without any notice / feedback - one of two new hires fired within 3 weeks. Was assigned to one task and when suspected of underperforming, was not provided with feedback, instead fired on first pay day at the end of the day. Company rumours were that there were intentions to only hire one person and that CEO was relying on one person quitting (however, can't verify this myself).
- Second outcome: quiet firing - assigning tasks well below person's capabilities due to perceived performance, engineer moved to admin duties, you will receive conflicting instructions on company code practices and then have to face unprofessional behaviour in the form of constant assumptions and unconstructive criticism about your understanding and coding abilities. Expect to have to push back to be able to explain your code and then they retract comments.
- Weird one but all staff members are constantly sick, small offices means sickness spreads constantly and wfo means that people rarely request to wfh / take time off
- Inner circle mentality / very cliquey - only certain staff members are included in all meetings, these members have their lunch paid for more often than not and are praised for their work. Don't expect to have lunch with the rest of your colleagues. Would be somewhat understandable in a big company but when there are 5 staff members (excl international staff), it's very noticeable.
- Some staff members expressed that they had similar experiences working there
- Salaries offered are below industry standard and no regular compensation review occurs
