Uncertain Future - Anonymous employee Autotrader Employee Review

The pay in tech is average at best, not above average as you may expect when working for a FTSE 100. The pay situation is below average in other parts of the business. The share scheme is a nice to have, but since being added it feels like it's being used as an excuse not to raise salaries as much. Due to this, it feels like the overall benefit package is the same. This could be just because of economic uncertainty aligning with bad timing. The main issue right now isn't money, it's cultural. The direction of travel is worrying, has been for a while but it is getting worse and it feels like it's starting to come to a head. It's starting to be a common topic of conversation around multiple teams and individuals. Slowly but surely, things are feeling more corporate. There's now a large middle management layer who seem like they're mostly out for themselves, ignoring any and all feedback to champion their vision, their own personal brand and acclaim. If they want it, it will be tried and damn anyone trying to create a discussion about it, let alone challenge is. This is causing immeasurable damage whilst wasting countless hours across so many parts of the business. These are not Autotrader people, they do not operate with the company values we are supposed to champion champion and the longer this remain,s the less those values will mean. We cannot be One Autotrader whilst we operate like this. The collaboration and flat structure which once defined Autotrader is slipping and I'm worried that will be lost for good. Many are becoming disenfranchised because of this, no longer on the passion of their craft and the business who supports them, more as a box ticking exercise. Why challenge things if every time you try you're ignored every time? Why give your passion to a company where you feel you can't enact change? It no longer feels like we're all in this together and the general person on the ground can no longer start discussions and enact change. The loss of this is immeasurable. The care for our platform and our existing, core functionalities is dwindling. In the past, we were constantly innovating and workshopping to come up with new ideas and enhancing the experience for our users. Everyone at all levels would take part in these exercises and good ideas would end up productionised. We're now operating more like a product factory, and half the time we can't even get that right. More often than not, we ship minimum viable product and are then rushed onto the next thing without the care and attention the work we do deserves. We leave a half baked execution that will remain for years as a poor imitation of what it was meant to be. Core functionalities that our consumers love and engage with readily haven't been changed or don't seem to have even been discussed for years. Focus is almost exclusively on new, revenue generating products instead as the existing functionality becomes outdated and surpassed by our competition. The company once valued personal development time and encouraged employees to develop themselves, champion their own personal brand and trusted that by improving themselves and their experience they would, in turn, be better at their jobs and provide more value. Now, you'd better hope any time you spend on personal development is focused on improving Autotrader directly, else that'll get questioned and shut down. This was unbelievably hard to write. I loved working at this company once. I still think it's an okay place to work as I write this, but it's so far from what it once was. I'm worried if the current trajectory continues it will no longer be special anymore. Just another place to work that no one really likes and does because they need a job. I really hope it can recover and return to what it once was, but hope in that is starting to feel fleeting.