Never bored - Product Manager Smiling Mind Employee Review

The app itself and mission are great My colleagues were generally lovely and passionate well meaning people The offices were great too and in a good location for me

The founders are very involved in every aspect of running the organisation and senior management just jump and do whatever they say. The founders seem to be mostly focused on 'looking good' and being seen to 'care' about mental health by establishing Smiling Mind - they don't seem interested in what will actually work and achieve the mission. I think they leverage their involvement to generate money from other business activities - it doesn't feel like they genuinely care. They also expect staff to work crazy hours. I came into the team from a very busy background (think: management consulting) and even my very solid work ethic was questioned when I wasn't willing to respond to every email within less than one hour. A super unhealthy, gaslighting culture. I left without a job to go to to protect my mental health as I had become anxious and drained from the culture and management.

Meaningful impactful app. Some very smart colleagues.

- Poor senior management, especially the top 4. They do whatever the founders tell them to - Founders interfere with operations and have poor digital understanding without self-awareness. - End users and staff come last, looking good in front of business partners and founders come first. - Both leadership and founders have poor digital literacy. For a digital app there has never been an IT role on the executive/leadership team leading to poor technical investment. Lack of technical knowledge leads to a gaslighting culture ("why does that cost so much?", "why would that take so long?"). - Lots of bureaucratic ex-government types more concerned with 90 page reports no one reads compared to a tiny investment in technical roles and systems. - Permanent contracts don't mean much as they have had two waves of redundancies in 3 years.