- Although they advertise that most of their jobs are in London, there is a good chance you could be posted elsewhere else in the country (I personally never got a London posting) and unlike with normal contracting companies, you don't get accommodation expenses paid outside the initial 2 weeks of moving while you get your accommodation sorted. This might not seem so bad, except its not uncommon for placements to end very abruptly, and you could be back on the bench (where you'd need to come into their London/Birmingham etc offices) with less than 3 weeks notice, and likewise, once on the bench you could be expected to start moving in 2 days or 2 months. You don't know how often you'll be on the bench, and with all this moving about on short notice you'd ideally need to be living with family between contracts.
- The salary you get paid is far below the going rate for an entry level IT job (except maybe helpdesk positions), and the contract is for 2 years. The choice you'll be making is deciding whether 2 years at a wage below the industry standard is worth it in order to get you a foot in the door of the industry.
- You don't get paid during training and you don't get paid until the first day of your first placement. The pre placement period (which means the time after you pass the training in which they have to find you a job before you're released from your contract or they have to start paying you) is 3 months, so in a worst case scenerio it could mean 6 months training with no steady income. The training course is intense and involves lots of homework in the evenings + weekends, so its not very easy to combine with part time work. This means you could have to rely financially on family, savings or Universal Credit for up to 6 months if you're not fortunate enough to already have part time work lined up.
- I personally have't had many issues with management, but I've seen a number of students who have had some pretty dodgy experiences with the company's application of company policy and the stories you'll read on these reviews are most likely true. I've heard them offering Spartans certain pay benefits and then trying to reduce the amount later on, offering full pay for a Spartan's last month before they were let go and then half way through the final month bullied them into retroactively agreeing to having it reduced to furlough amount.
- If you're on the tech stream, you'll get no say in what specialty (ie platform engineering, C ++, java, SDET) you get placed in. You could start your career in tech in a field that isn't your first choice.
- You could get placed in a job you weren't trained for. I've seen DevOps get placed as devs, devs placed as testers, and have even heard of one bizarre case where someone on the tech stream got placed as a BA.