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      Babylon

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      Babylon Reviews

      3.3

      30% would recommend to a friend

      (889 total reviews)
      avatar

      Ali Parsa

      27% approve of CEO

      15% positive business outlook

      Babylon has an employee rating of 3.3 out of 5 stars, based on 889 company reviews on Glassdoor which indicates that most employees have a good working experience there. The Babylon employee rating is in line with the average (within 1 standard deviation) for employers within the Healthcare industry (3.4 stars).

      Reviews by job title

      889 reviews
      1.0
      15 Mar 2020

      Toxic culture will flush $550 million down the toilet

      Anonymous employee
      Recommend
      CEO approval
      Business outlook

      Pros

      Great mission and many smart, amazing people.

      Cons

      Toxic leadership at the very top rules the day at Babylon. Leaders are arrogant, manipulative and political. Anyone who stands up to leadership will be ignored, blacklisted and/or fired while incompetent people who stroke leadership's egos will be promoted. Leaders frequently said Babylon needed fewer people with healthcare backgrounds, which is very scary when trying to navigate the US healthcare system. It was a frequent occurrence for leadership without US healthcare experience to suggest doing things that anyone with US healthcare experience knows cannot be done under current healthcare regulations. It was difficult to sit through presentations comparing doctors to Uber drivers and patients to Uber riders. It would not be surprising if Babylon ends up featured in a Harvard business case or a Netflix documentary as an example of what not to do after raising $550 million. The founder wows new employees and investors with product demos that are mocked up and years away from becoming a reality. In the opinion of many Babylon product and engineering team members, the symptom checker is not really "AI". The symptom checker is a rules engine that is filled with bugs and providers have voiced their concern. After fundraising, they rushed to increase their UK office to over 1000 employees. This resulted in the creation of numerous siloed teams building different apps that created disjointed spaghetti code and products that were inferior copycat versions of apps already on the market such as wearable device activity trackers and menstrual cycle trackers. Finally, Babylon doesn't treat its employees very well. There is a reason that 15% of the US office has resigned since Jan 1 and many more are looking to leave. They promised employees stock options that were included in offer letters and over a year later, they haven't issued a single certificate to any US employees and claim they're still working on it. The health insurance is very expensive, especially if you have a family. They promised performance reviews with raises and bonuses, but almost 18 months in to the US office being open there has not been a single performance review or salary increase discussion. It is a software development company, yet leadership treats employees like school children. Software developers like working flexible hours and the US leader constantly accused people of not working hard enough if they weren't sitting at their desk from 9am-6pm even though many were working late into the evening and on the weekends. In summary, Babylon is not the place to be if you are a great employee.

      1.0
      20 Mar 2020

      Think twice about Babylon

      Director
      Recommend
      CEO approval
      Business outlook

      Pros

      Digital health as a sector has promise

      Cons

      Babylon has a toxic culture, product issues and relies heavily on Saudi money. I decided to write this review to help job candidates make an informed decision. Unfortunately, Babylon is a highly dysfunctional workplace with a toxic culture. I think there are some decent and competent professionals in the ranks but they are not the ones in charge. Instead, most senior leaders are based in London and have little to no US healthcare experience. I'm also concerned that the company has been more technology-driven than healthcare-driven. What’s worse, they’re not even getting the technology part right. I witnessed a number of examples where physicians and other healthcare professionals were treated with little regard. An external facing example of this made headlines when Babylon openly criticized a physician who pointed out safety concerns with its flagship chatbot product. The physician called out Babylon for having a culture that “trys to silence criticism” rather than engage with genuine clinician concerns. I believe the company will be very challenged to grow into its record $2Bn post money valuation from its last capital raise led by Saudi Arabia's Public Investment Fund (PIF). From a US perspective, I'm not a fan of the Saudis involved in the US healthcare system where data privacy is paramount. Frankly, if you're interested in US digital health, there are other more reputable US-based companies that aren't compromised by poor UK-based management, Saudi money and a shoddy product. Plus the pay and benefits are way below market.

      avatar
      Babylon Response
      6y
      Thank you for your review. Over the past two months, Babylon has carried out the vital process of reviewing our engineering platform, technology tribe structure and general capabilities to ensure the product is more scalable and to support long-term global delivery. The COVID-19 crisis has obviously also had a huge impact on both our clients’ needs and delivery requirements, and we have had to review our structures to reflect our short-term delivery needs. This work resulted in around 5% of our workforce being furloughed in the UK as they were not critical to current delivery while others have left the business as they fell outside of the scope of our renewed longer-term focus. During those same two months, we have seen a resultant upturn in the number of negative reviews, with March and April now representing nearly 50% of the total reviews Babylon has received in its six years history on Glassdoor. Within Babylon we have a strong safety culture across our engineering, product and clinical operations teams, and closely monitor all aspects of safety, so that we comply with best practice in all areas. We don’t just rely on our internal processes; we are audited, inspected and reported on by numerous external bodies, and we score highly, i.e. the recent report by the CQC in which we were rated outstanding for being well-led. None of our products get released without passing safety testing, that is done every time, whether it be for the release of a brand-new product or a minor feature change. Safety approval is required for all changes in the live product. At Babylon, we really value our open and collaborative culture and carry out a survey among our two thousand employees every two weeks anonymously using an independent platform, collecting thousands of data points to assess the true feelings of Babylonian across many different subjects. Our survey shows when asked, ‘I’m inspired by the purpose and mission of our organisation’, 89% scored 7 or more out of 10 and ‘How likely is it you would recommend Babylon as a place to work?’, 71% scored 7 or more out of 10.
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      Glassdoor has 954 Babylon reviews submitted anonymously by Babylon employees. Read employee reviews and ratings on Glassdoor to decide if Babylon is right for you.