A Masterclass in Wasted Potential - Product Designer Financial Times Employee Review

Management is completely incompetent. They don’t focus on improving the product, only on proving their own value up the chain. Every now and then they throw around new buzzwords that mean nothing, but I suppose it helps them impress their superiors with how amazing things supposedly are. The few who do try to improve the product are obsessed with chasing metrics instead of guiding it in a thoughtful direction. There are far too many people in management roles. Most add no real value and only make communication slower and more confusing, often reinforcing silos in the process. Your voice never matters. The hierarchy is strict, and upper management won’t listen to ideas from below, no matter how good they are. They don’t ask about problems and don’t care to hear them. On top of that, there’s an extreme obsession with positivity, where constructive feedback is ignored and anything less than cheerful is dismissed. Work is entirely delivery driven, which kills creativity. Day to day conversations revolve around sprints and Jira tickets, but the product itself feels like an afterthought. Promotions aren’t based on skill. You need to perform and play politics to move up. This leads to endless presentations that sound more like sales pitches than genuine work, overcomplicated nonsense that wastes everyone’s time. It’s hard to overstate how much potential is being wasted here. Most people barely engage for more than a couple of hours a day. Everyone’s just trying to look busy. You either accept that you’ll never grow here but can coast with minimal effort, or you leave.