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      freetobook

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      freetobook Reviews

      4.7

      91% would recommend to a friend

      (19 total reviews)

      81% positive business outlook

      freetobook has an employee rating of 4.7 out of 5 stars, based on 19 company reviews on Glassdoor which indicates that most employees have an excellent working experience there. The freetobook employee rating is 22% above average for employers within the Information Technology industry (3.9 stars).

      Reviews by job title

      19 reviews
      1.0
      18 Jan 2018

      Avoid at all costs

      Web developer
      Recommend
      CEO approval
      Business outlook

      Pros

      Dev team have the sort of camaraderie usually only found between prisoners of war.

      Cons

      1. Management border on psychologically abusive Management's treatment of the IT staff is simply the worst I've ever seen. I don't think it's intentional but working for them is like being in an abusive relationship: they change the requirements constantly and act like you just didn't understand them (gaslighting); they claim they only want the best for you but at the same time undermine you professionally and constantly question your skills and motivations (hot-cold); they threaten to sack people that they suspect are job hunting (controlling behavior/jealousy); they even eavesdrop on developer meetings (paranoia). 2. Favoritism About 3 members of staff are trusted by the management. They are given extended permissions and privileges. They are given better equipment, conference tickets, expenses and pretty much anything reasonable that they ask for. Some favoritism is to be expected everywhere, but this was on the level that the favorite developers received new laptops while a not-favorite developer was stuck with a bottom of the range PC which had been crashing for months. This is, to my mind, absolutely absurd and unacceptable. 3. Micromanaging Unsurprisingly for borderline-abusive senior management with trust issues, they micromanage constantly. None of them are technical people, none of them understand software development, yet they somehow believe it's appropriate for them to sit and watch you code, overrule technical decisions, argue with developers on technical code related logic and behavior etc. etc. 4. "Family Company" The entire management and back-office staff are related to one another, so you simply have nowhere to turn with a complaint about any of the above behavior. If you try to raise issues, they listen sympathetically and then say that they're too old to change. 5. Lack of expertise within the company Their hiring policy for about a decade seems to have been to hire people straight out of university. As a result there is a huge lack of technical expertise within the company. Nobody really seems capable of steering projects or designing the systems they work on. This is not the fault of the developers, they really try their best and are good folks, but they just don't have the direction or the experience to make a good job of it. 6. Atrocious legacy codebase As you can imagine, a system built by fresh grads and overseen by micromanaging non-technical managers is a total disaster area. You will lose your sanity working on it. Overall Do not work for these people. There is not enough money in the world (and they don't have it anyway).

      avatar
      freetobook Response
      8y
      Thank you, feedback is always welcome. Let's start at the beginning. Context was one of Einstein's great things and it makes sense to put some in here. We have really grown in the last 2 years and that's meant we have many great opportunities to do more for our customers... but we also need more great people. Trying to more than double the size of our tech team has been a challenge, we all know the market for great developers is red hot. We are "family run" Tech business so we're quite direct and occasionally a little blunt, but only because we want to do the best job for our customers... we don't have ego's or agendas here. We also think “trust” is a really big thing, it is always given but more can be earnt, and it can also be lost (i.e. you’d lose trust if you sat down in a Stand Up). All that goes for the whole business, each and every way. A huge part of growth has been down to the trust we have earned from our customers. When you offer the only "freemium model" booking engine in the world you have to work really hard for that trust. But we’ve grown and our passionate customers are also a testament to the quality of development and intuitiveness of the system. Getting that logic perfect has involved (and always will) lots of input from “non-technical people”, people with real “skin in the game”….our clients and our service support colleagues. We are not all “experts” and we can always learn more and do better… which is why we like recruiting the best! That said, the team here have built systems (from the ground up) that have transacted billions of dollars worth of bookings without so much as hiccup. To do that you have to know your stuff. When the biggest names in online bookings want something alpha tested they come to us. When they rank us v’s our competitors, we’re in the top 3 out of over 300 and that’s with our legacy code. All our new colleagues want to work on projects with our guys. Why? because they know their stuff, so the end of point 5 is a little out-of-order. We have definitely taken on some of the advice above, it has been really helpful. Sometimes it just doesn’t work out, nobody is only right or only wrong, just very different. PS everyone got brand new laptops, we just trialled it first!
      1.0
      9 Feb 2018

      Beware

      Devops
      Recommend
      CEO approval
      Business outlook

      Pros

      - 10% time (just recently) - **Most** people are nice, friendly and a joy to talk with.

      Cons

      **Environment** The working environment is an uncomfortable atmosphere and this creates a lot of tension and awkwardness within the team. The management flip and flop from being nice to quite aggressive. I have personally witnessed management swear at developers and on one occasion kicking walls while storming out the office. Due to this type of erratic environment, all developers sit with headphones on most of the time and most chats etc are done over Teams and Slack even tho people are within speaking distance of each other. The office decor is also lacking to add to the grim environment: - 2nd hand carpets that are years old with stains all over. - No blinds on Windows. - Scabby/dated toilets and kitchen area. - Damp and dingy in general. **However** they were meant to get an office makeover but at the time of writing this had not happened 15 months after being told it would. **Daily Work** I was hired as a Linux DevOps Engineer but this was so far from my role and only played a very small part. My day to day work was mostly a mix of: - Heavy desktop support - Networking - Windows admin (SBS2008... no joke) - Reactive to multiple daily urgent tickets If you are hired into a DevOps role, then no matter what you're told this will be such a small part of your job. **General** To sum up the cons: - Zero budgets, can't get basic stuff paid for. - Technical advice was ignored or overruled consistently. - Projects change massively on a daily basis. - Projects never complete and overrun due to the above - For a software house, there are unbelievably out of date, < 2010 technology. - **Very high** development staff turn-over for the size of the team. - Spoke critically of companies that they depend on to survive. - Due to all of the above, the amount of technical debt is staggering. This was all brought up with management in reviews over a year before I moved on very little changed if anything. I felt like I lost skills working for Freetobook sadly and found it hard to move on due to how badly my skillset had elapsed and technical motivation lacked.

      avatar
      freetobook Response
      8y
      Firstly, a genuine thanks for the feedback. This is a real tough read but it all helps, everyone can always do better and we are no different. So hopefully the few lines below will show that we take it all seriously and enjoy the challenge of "doing it better"! In terms of environment, we have grown a lot and that meant bringing in lot of new people. Alongside of this we needed new processes with better planning and management, embedding all that is quite challenge but we have made some really positive changes. The scale of our growth has meant projects are bigger and more complex, often encompassing several strands at once. We want our Dev Teams to be independent and think creatively, to want to learn and grow with every task and be happy sharing all that. We are getting there... lots of smiles and positive feedback in the last reviews! The office does need a make-over and it's getting a great one, it's taken longer than we wanted but it's planned and paid for. Can't wait to share the photos! The 2nd hand carpets are going, but I would point out they were recylced and provided/fitted by a Social Enterprise - that was a conscious decision on our part and we are proud of those ethics. On the Dev Ops side, we fully agree. There is not a big enough role for someone with a great skillset like yours so we have split out several roles and are bringing in a 3rd party to do some of the desktop stuff. There are quite a lot of other "cons" and much has been explained in the above. We have just completed 2 big projects that have improved our tech stack considerably, we never say no to buying the best and hiring the best. We depend on our lovely customers, people and our wits to survive.... for the last 20yrs, but we will always want to do better😊
      5.0
      16 June 2026

      A company that genuinely values its people

      Head of people
      Recommend
      CEO approval
      Business outlook

      Pros

      A genuinely warm and welcoming company that truly takes care of its employees. The culture is fantastic—supportive, collaborative, and built on people looking out for one another. The team is incredibly experienced and talented, with everyone passionate about what they do and taking real pride in delivering a great job. It’s an environment where you feel valued and motivated to do your best.

      Cons

      No notable cons to highlight at this time.

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