Pros
Colleagues: I've made some really great connections and friends with my fellow inmates. If there's one thing they right here, it's that they find the right mix of personable and charismatic victims to bring into the fold. Office Location: The campus and adjacent staff office is in a nice little nook in Shoreditch. The local bars and restaurants make the best escapes to drown your sorrows and eat away the exhaustion/depression. Pro tip, open a bar near any BrainStation location to guarantee a loyal customer base. Hybrid Working: As advertised, the role IS hybrid. You get a whole ONE day per week to WFH...as long as that's a Wednesday or Friday. Socials: A fair amount of money goes towards regular team socials. These are quite fun to start with before the burnout kicks in. Paid Lunches / Snacks: Okay this one is serious, they provide some decent lunches on Tuesday and Thursday from local Shoreditch eateries. Oh and of course there's pizza on Fridays!
Cons
Work Hours: The role is advertised as your standard office job, so that's a 9-5:30. What they don't tell you until you've joined is that you are also expected to work events. Every week there is an evening event that runs until 8 or 9pm and you are expected to work these additional 3.5 hours ON TOP of your weekly 40. There is also a quarterly "tech social" you are expected to stay for and this runs until 9ish. A monthly morning event and a monthly Saturday event. If you work the Saturday you do at least get paid for a full day (thanks boss). Growth: The sole differentiator between an Associate Learning Advisor, Learning Advisor, and Senior Learning Advisor is how long you've been there for. Sit out your 12 months and you'll get your promotion. This will be a salary increase of £2,500 per level. Commission Structure: Selling a course for £2950 gets you £40 (1.4%) Selling a bootcamp for £10,500 gets you £80 (0.76%) Take a second to read over that maths again and digest those percentages. As an Associate Learning Advisor you need to hit a threshold of 3 sales before making commission. That's 4 for Learning Advisors, and 5 for Snr Learning Advisors. That means if you sell 4 courses as an Associate, you only make commission on that 1 sale above 3. For Learning Advisors and above the commission does increase to 60 and 120 respectively but still doesn't incentivise you to actually want that promotion. Someone make it make sense. Lack of Feedback: Probation is 3 months, you won't get any fanfare or notice passing this nor have any feedback received from your management about setting goals for the next milestone. In your first year you will have a 6 month review. This is a great time to sit quietly in a meeting for 30 minutes with your team leader and direct manager (who btw is across an entire ocean) while they just talk at you about how you've performed. Again, no goal setting or direct feedback. Leadership/Management: This is the big one. Read every other review from any other location and you will find this common thread. In London your direct manager is about 5,500km away in New York. Very hard to reach. Management will make abrupt decisions that they believe are better for the team but in almost all cases these are not very thought out and do nothing but annoy and anger the actual Learning Advisors. It seems that they never consult anyone below a certain paygrade when they make these decision, like changing the commission structure so that only those who are on a half decent portfolio can actually make any sales. Or changing the policy such that if you work a weekend day you don't get a day of PTO back but just pay instead. "We're always hiring" they tout with a smile....the turnover is insanely high, the average team member might last 7-8 months before seeing sense and jumping ship. If you're fresh out of uni and desperate for a job, take it. But don't stop searching and bail the moment you can!