Pros
- Nice colleagues, made some lasting friendships - Building is nicely decorated, though this novelty wears of quite fast - Pay is ok but not industry standards. - Its a good place to get started if you are a graduate looking for your first break because you will learn a lot. Everyone does everything and a lot of the times, what you agreed to at interview will be completely different from the actual role. As a fresh graduate, there is a good opportunity to learn. If you are an experienced professional (like I am), you will struggle, especially if you are already clear on what direction your career needs to take.
Cons
Management - Poorly managed. Founders do not care to listen to what other people have to say. If you are great at brown nosing and sucking up then this may be the place for you. Hard work doesn't mean anything here. People get promoted because they go on drinking sessions with the founders and have perfected the art of telling the founders what they want to hear. If you are not good at bootlicking, then nothing for you here. Introverts go completely unnoticed, unappreciated & unrecognized - They do not trust you to do the job you were hired to do. You will either get micromanagement all the time or you will be ignored completely. You may spend a lot of time and effort on projects and will get no feedback, no recognition, nothing for your efforts. Occasionally, you may get a slice of pizza and beer for your troubles and a long winded speech about the future but that's it. - Upper management appear to be approachable but are very manipulative. Culture - Poor working culture compared to other places I have worked. Again, management does not respect the people who work for them. - There are signs all over the place that encourage you to speak freely and share ideas - proceed with caution here because all three of the founders get easily offended if you say anything other than 'you are great, your company is great, your idea is great etc'. - Bullying is tolerated by management. All three of them do it in different ways. CTO may shout and demean you with his words while the other two (CEO and Business Development VP) will ignore you and create a very hostile and uncomfortable environment to work in. Work environment - Staff has low morale (at least by the time I left, it may be different now but I doubt it) - Management have favorites and show it. - Decision making takes a very long time - ironically much longer than corporates as this is one of the selling points at interview. This is very frustrating - Working from home is discouraged I must say though that the people I worked with were excellent, management has let them down. Job role - Be prepared to work on tasks outside what you signed up for. In my case, about 90% of what I was doing was outside of what was agreed at interview - CTO has no respect for your personal time. You can expect to receive calls, texts and emails at all hours of the night