Pros
1. It is a startup company, so there are a few employees.
- As there are only a few employees, each and every one is very close to one another.
2. They provided a company laptop, but it is so slow and barely usable. Other issues regarding the laptop include its low specifications for the tasks we are working on, its age, and being second-hand. Thus, one of the laptops is defective.
3. They assign an unreasonable number of tasks as a form of training, which leads to burnout, sleep deprivation, questioning of your skills, and having no social life.
4. There are company events, but they are funded by the employees, such as the Christmas Party.
5. They gave us company merchandise, and it is of very high quality.
Cons
1. Every day, they conduct one-on-one meetings with each employee (because of their micro-managing tendencies), and each session can last one to one and a half hours. While this is acceptable, they consistently arrive at the office very late, causing us to extend our working hours by 30 minutes or more, resulting in overtime. Unfortunately, overtime is unpaid, but if you are late, your salary will be deducted by 100 pesos.
2. The deadlines for the tasks they are assigning are very unreasonable. They expect us to create 10+ screens (both mobile and web versions) within two days and present them to the developers. In addition to that, they are also assigning side tasks on top of the screens we need to create.
3. We didn't perform any tasks related to UX; we only focused on UI design. Since we didn't conduct any user research or interviews, consider user navigation flow, or any similar activities, we just worked on the UI. However, apart from that, we are also required to develop a navigation flow for users. We need to consider information for the input fields and think about various possibilities that might arise, all within a two-day timeframe. While we have a guide, it is based on a barebone website they had before, and the sample data provided is not very helpful for us to understand the current process of the specific feature. In short, we are tasked with designing, planning the process, and considering the necessary data input, all within two days.
4. They assign tasks at the end of Friday, expecting an output ready by Monday morning, effectively implying the need to work on weekends.
5. There is no formal onboarding or orientation process about the company. They expect us to gather information by reading their website and Facebook postings.
6. There is a lack of training or workshops; we were immediately thrust into the work without prior knowledge. Given our inexperience in this role, there is also a absence of senior guidance, leaving us to navigate the tasks independently.