Engineering Potential Wasted by Mismanagement and Inequality - Software Engineer II OakNorth Employee Review

During my time working in digital lending at OakNorth, the project felt poorly planned and lacked strategic direction. Based on how things were progressing, I wouldn’t be surprised if the project is discontinued within the next year. Despite the hard work put in by the digital lending team, recognition was noticeably lacking. While other teams received public shoutouts on company-wide calls, early finishes, or even small rewards like brownies for delivering features, our team was routinely overlooked. During a particularly intense two-week period where the entire team worked overtime to meet deadlines, the CEO only offered a thank you after being prompted by a project manager. It left many of us feeling undervalued and demoralised. The engineering culture operated very much like a feature factory. Although we were theoretically meant to dedicate 20% of our time to addressing technical debt, in practice there was little to no room for this. As a result, the product remained fragile, and progress was painstakingly slow. There was also a striking lack of frontend knowledge within the digital lending team and more broadly across engineering. This gap meant that myself and another engineer often had to spend weeks cleaning up and refactoring frontend code after features had already been delivered. It was frustrating and unsustainable. For two years, I was the only woman in a team of 15 or 16 developers. The experience was isolating, and unfortunately, this lack of gender diversity reflected deeper cultural issues within the company. Casual misogyny was not only present, but also dismissed or downplayed when raised. Feedback directed at women often relied on outdated stereotypes, such as being told they were “too direct.” Women were even mistaken for delivery drivers in the office. When I raised concerns with a director of engineering, he told me it was “all in my head” and dismissed the issue by saying, “You’re the only girl but we’re all people.” There was no clear or demonstrable effort from HR, recruitment, or engineering leadership to improve the recruitment or retention of women in technical roles. While there were many claims about future intentions—what they might do or hope to do—there were no concrete actions or outcomes that could be pointed to during my time there. The CEO implemented a return-to-office policy with fixed days, just so he could physically see more people in the office. This decision, along with the broader decline in workplace culture, contributed to a significant number of engineers leaving the company. The leadership has struggled to replace those who left, which has only added to the strain on remaining staff. There is also a troubling lack of pay transparency at OakNorth. Engineers at the same level can be on vastly different salaries, with mid-level engineers earning anywhere between £55K and £85K. There is no formal salary banding, and no transparency around how pay decisions are made. Fortunately, engineers do talk to each other, which is the only reason this disparity comes to light. We were told that when one engineer is promoted, others at the same level would be considered for promotion too. However, in practice this rarely happened, and several engineers—especially women—were consistently overlooked. On two occasions during my time at OakNorth, I was given incorrect information about my compensation. In both cases, I was later told I would be receiving less money than originally promised, including reductions in both salary and bonus figures. This lack of reliability around pay contributed to a sense of mistrust and frustration.