Pros
Pay was received on time. I had a nice laptop.
Cons
Staff turnover was very high. It was not uncommon to see people resign (or be fired) within weeks of joining. Between me accepting the job offer, and starting my first day 2 weeks later, my new line manager had quit and declined to serve his notice. By the time I left myself, 4 months later, I was one of the senior members on my team because everyone else had quit and been replaced. This rate of staff turnover means there is a huge knowledge deficit, which senior management seems to be wilfully ignorant of. No one had a solid grasp of how to do their job well, and they certainly couldn't explain to me what my job was. The only person on my team with a solid understanding of their responsibilities was treated appallingly, with zero respect for their work-life balance. The knowledge deficit was created by the CEO’s tendency to fire people on a whim. Replacements came in with zero handover, and almost nothing was documented. I was frequently asked to update frankly baffling Excel models, and when I asked who had originally built the model, the author was always someone who had been fired 6 months prior. The business does not operate like other businesses (it does not manufacture widgets or provide a service), and so expecting staff to come in and simply get the issues and start fixing them is unreasonable. There is an attitude of “just make it work”, and when new employees, with no handover, no manager and no documentation, failed to “make it work”, they would be berated by the CEO and then quit, which perpetuated the problem. The social aspect of work was non-existent. I appreciate that we were all working from home at the time, but there was no attempt to hold any virtual social events. New members of staff were, therefore, very isolated. There was effectively no HR department if you had complaints, and no performance reviews or feedback. The tasks I was asked to do were completely unrelated to my skills and qualifications. So, all in all, there was almost nothing positive for my career. This is not “start up culture”, this is just poor organisation. Teams were very siloed. Despite my team being part of a central business function, other teams were not willing to take time to address our shared issues. Tasks were shunted to us, in the name of efficiency for revenue generating teams, and we failed to succeed at them because we were not given the time, the tools or the knowledge. And consistently, the attitude from management seemed to be that they had simply “hired the wrong people”.
