BSkyB Reviews

Pros

Good working hours, very nice working environment, friendly managers

Cons

Lack of clear career progression, no bonus scheme, work can be very boring

Advice to Senior Management

Create a clear and attainable career progression structure for employees

Pros

Well paid, nice people on the team.
If you like nandos then this is for you, as there are biweekly visits.
Facilities on site are good including a gym and hairdressers.

Cons

The manager of the test team is inexperienced, his management style consisting of tellIng people "there's the door" if they suggest new processes he doesn't like.

In this way he maintains the least competent who keep their heads down.
On the plus side the team is large, mainly due to the technical inadequacy, thus keeping python developers in London employed, just don't expect to use anything you learned after the age of 10.

The tests are written mostly using cut and paste, this is not seen as a problem; in this way they've generated over 1 million lines of unmaintainable code; quite an achievement in a concise language like python.

The site itself contains cheaply built ugly buildings, problems occur including poweroutages and semi regular drainage problems with the toilets.

The main campus has barriers and passes are needed everywhere leading to a prison like atmosphere; the posters of happy sky customers make the whole thing feel like a corporate version of north Korea.

Advice to Senior Management

Get some managers from other software teams in and implement best practice... sending emails when things break with red capital letters is shockingly unprofessional.

Pros

- - Blue chip name.

Cons

- Massive pressure to 'deliver' projects despite unrealistic time lines set by a disconnected management, each trying to outdo the next dept.... This results in projects never getting properly closed down, documented and handed over...New work-streams end up going ahead before BRDs have even been signed off... everything is rushed, which is spun as 'fast paced and dynamic'...
- Below industry average pay, no yearly bonus.
- Longstanding under investment in key technology. Sky only invests in technology when it breaks.
- Understaffed; morale is low and turnover high.. Management would much rather hire contractors on huge daily rates, rather than perm in order to keep 'headcount' artificially low.
- No training, it's 100% on the job. Sink or swim.
- The HQ in Isleworth is set on an 80s industrial estate, shared with an incineration plant and a builders merchants.

Advice to Senior Management

Introduce better tangible benefits (i.e a yearly bonus to all staff, not just the exec) So many people I know move on because the compensation is just not able to compete with similar jobs in other companies. Hire fewer contractors and invest in training permanent staff.

Pros

- Free Sky + Broadband
- Good work life balance

Cons

- Poor salary unless you come in at management grades.
- Zero career progression
- Zero opportunities
- Zero training

Advice to Senior Management

Create a structure where employees can progress. Pay staff market rate salaries and do not string staff along for minimal wage. Whenever a project is created always follow through with the phases and do not jump and abandon projects at the end of phase one, for anyone that works at Sky will agree with this. Employ management who actually produce tangible results

Pros

initial salary that never goes up

Cons

MACHO - Shoot first ask questions later (when people are dead)
AGGRESSIVE - Talk over everyone to make yourself the only voice.
EARS FIRMLY CLOSED - order people about so much you can't actually hear them or care even.
SILENCE AND SMOTHER - if intelligent people say things which make other people look bad they
must be 'taken care off' .
FALSE PROMISES - dangle carrots which don't exsist
MISS SELLING JOB - the usual, 'you can carve out your own career' in reality do what I say.
CAREER DESTROYER - try talking to employers afterwards you'll be so dumbed down and confidence wrecked that you'll need years to recover.

Advice to Senior Management

You are lucky you have Sky Sports and premier league matches , otherwise the shear waste is enormous , you train people to be life-less unmotivated drones who use all the extra money getting wasted at the weekends to forget about who they work for.

Pros

It's a good environment if you like football, ,lots of banter and the free sky package is a nice bonus. If you work in finance the terms are quite favorable and there is a proper progression route in place.
Good name to have on the CV if you can stand it for 18 months or so.

Cons

Extremely silod teams and perpetual power-struggles between depts makes work much harder than it should be. Many senior managers push pressure onto their staff and expect them to put in long (unpaid) hours, without the qidproqo of enhanced prospects, pay etc..

Hush-hush attitude over pay, yearly reviews do not relate to pay or performance and are quite simply an academic exercise.

As with all large companies there is a lot of red-tape and certain parts of the business (e.g. technology) are very poorly resourced as a result. The location is also very poor unless you happen to live in Twickenham/Richmond - 35 mins from Waterloo and you're still in London...

Pay is also below average and there is very little in the way of formal training or progression, unless you're an accountant...

Advice to Senior Management

Spend some money on training and re-investing in your staff AT ALL LEVELS not just on a select few. Make pay reviews transparent across the business.

Pros

Good name to have on CV
Free Sky

Cons

Agressive, shoot first ask questions later culture.
Lack of direction from senior management.
No bonus programme.
Long hours.
Too many chiefs
Technology dept perpetually under-resoursed.
Silod departments with own agendas - lack of communication
No training

Advice to Senior Management

Stop making decisions on a 'whim' and fully analyse/understand the consequences of your actions to those staff mambers at the business end. Introduce a performance related pay scheme, the current annual review process is a waste of time

Pros

Having BSkyB on your CV looks good simply because it seems that other employers understand that if you can survive for any length of time at Sky, then you could pretty much cope in any other environment.

Cons

Working in a warehouse on an industrial estate on the outskirts of London, BSkyB is jam-packed with macho, aggressive and under-experienced managers and squadrons of very unhappy staff. Pay is below average, you're expected to put in very long hours and are taken for granted.
A very dark place to work.

Advice to Senior Management

Sky is incredibly successful. The majority of staff are extremely unhappy. The two are not related. However, if staff at Sky were treated even better, the company would make even more money. The depressing thing is that managers at Sky are far too risk-averse to try anything new.

Pros

Free Sky tv & broadband

Cons

Company top heavy with marketing and sales teams.
Below inflation pay rises despite company making record profits (£1bn)
Macho working environment
No bonus scheme
Culture of secrecy
Poor work/life balance
Promotions based on who you know
HR PDPs are a waste of time.
Useless IT Systems

Advice to Senior Management

Cut the flim-flam marketing propaganda, and invest in some quality programmes, proper back-end processes and actually empower your employees to 'be better'.

Pros

You can learn a lot if you get on the right projects.

Cons

Still has the macho aggressive culture that helped it grow to where it is, which isnt suitable for sustaining a mature business.
Because of the politics you might hear what your manager thinks is the best thing for them to say, but you may hear the oppostie the following week.
HR has very poor internal survey scores for management (HR and Talent Management).

Advice to Senior Management

Practice what you preach and do it well - you should be role modelling best practice people management.
I know you think you're being genuine and 'nice', but stop kidding yourself. Being nice one week and then telling yourself you're being loyal to the company by being unfairly harsh the next week, is just inauthentic, unprofessional and bad management.