Pros
The people you immediately work with are some of the most dedicated and unflappable people out there. Given the frustrations that could arise with the work, the constant pleasant nature of everyone was superhuman. The nature of the job meant people often had to make do with inadequate equipment or a changing job that the in-house software wasn't designed for and the attitude to get on with things combined with a helpful mentality to ensure everyone had support is really the best thing I could say about Isentia.
Cons
Poor career prospects. Poor equipment. Poor office layout. Poor network infrastructure. Basically there was the feeling that past a certain point in the hierarchy the company couldn't give a stuff about you. The result has been a two-speed company where one side has decent equipment, solid pay, and good career prospects while the other is left banging rocks together. Ultimately the former group couldn't do their job without the latter group and the failure to recognise this was disappointing. On top of that priorities seem slanted away from the production side and into the public side - for example it took over eight months to replace a number of inadequate 12 year old PCs that were preventing people from being able to do their jobs. Network problems that have plagued the production side for years steadily got worse and only started being addressed when it essentially stopped the company in its tracks and resulted in a scathing employee engagement survey result. And while long-term solutions have been in the pipeline for a long time, the immediate short-term solutions were all provided by the people at the coal face because those in management - and even in technical support - didn't understand the systems, the processes, or even what was supposed to happen. This culture was further reflected in the cookie-cutter performance review structure which rated people on performances in areas that weren't applicable to their roles while also failing to recognise achievements outside the job description. An attempt was made to rectify this during my time here but with mixed results that again favoured one side of the company over the other.
