Be extremely cautious - Team Lead Hack Partners Employee Review

Hi there, Thank you for toning down your original review which no doubt you eventually realised was spurious and derogatory to your former colleagues. It took me a while to work up the courage to respond to your review, but given you took the time to review us, we think it’s only fair we took the time to respond and review you too. So let’s do this. Thank you for the compliments. We’re glad you found the environment high-pace and projects varied. To be quite honest, we are disappointed you wrote such a negative review given how well we treated you as a colleague and might I add - as a friend. Immature Management We are not sure how you have objectively come to this conclusion? We try our best to be reasonable and show care to our staff at all times. An example of this is how we supported you during your time here. You were given an above-market salary for someone with your skill + expertise as you mentioned you were going through some financial difficulties and needed more income to cover unexpected expenses. We did this entirely at our discretion to help you during a challenging time. When we discovered you were going through other hardships, we corralled around you giving you nothing but love, care, and support. Those dinner parties and after-work gaming sessions were because we wanted to give you fun positive experiences that would serve as a healthy distraction from other areas of your life. I’m not sure an immature or uncaring management team would do the same? High churn and no room for work-life balance You are right, 2019 was a particularly bad year where we had a high churn rate. It’s not something we’re proud of, but it happened nonetheless, and it’s something we have learned from. Though I would like to make clear, some personnel who were let go simply were not performing well and we make no apologies for wanting to only have the very best talent from a skill and work ethic perspective in our team. Thankfully so far 2020 has been better for all of us when it comes to work-life balance, but like any startup who is competing against other hungry entrepreneurs, we do sometimes have to go above and beyond to stay ahead of the market. We have tried to minimise this as much as possible where in our control and are very proud to say this year has been much more reasonable for all of us - including the business’s directors who last year probably put in about 60-hour weeks every week last year to keep the company going. One thing that has certainly helped is recruiting new colleagues who we can rely on to get the work done during their core working hours. One of the main reasons work-life balance was so bad last year due to certain colleagues simply not pulling their weight. This is where we do find your statement quite ironic. Despite being a Team Lead, you and your friend showed a lack of self-discipline in your work consistently coming in at 11am, taking 1.5 hour long lunch breaks, and then leaving at 6pm. When you were here you frequently bantered with your friend. Not only did this mean you got very little work done during your time here, but it also made other colleagues feel disrespected who often had to put in extra hours due to your lack of effort and empathy. We communicated this to you several times and even re-arranged our internal stand-ups to meet you halfway. Whilst you did improve, it was always temporary with you reverting back to coming in at 11 or even after 11am missing stand-ups and disrupting the productivity of your team. No real disruption to show Thank you for sharing your opinion. We’ll let history be the judge of this one. Clear lack of direction or purpose We can’t disagree too much here, 2019 was a challenging year where we were transitioning from being a hackathon only business to a product and services company. We regularly communicated to you and others that the business was pivoting and that it would not be an easy process. We’re glad to say we made it through with several of our products now being used in the market and the business is better for it. It is surprising you would give the business a straight 1-star despite at least some positives you mentioned which many other organisations don’t provide. All in all, it speaks volumes about your own values and integrity that you would write such a review after all the support we provided you simply because your friend, who you recommended we hire, had a bad experience with us. Personally I want to thank you for your time at the company, you did do some good work which has made a positive difference to the industry, and I hope you grow and learn in the right ways moving forward. Many thanks, River Chief Executive