Pros
The people - if you're not senior management, a tech team who are massively under resourced but under huge stress get things done. Not really micro-managed which means its a decent stepping stone in terms of personal career development.
Cons
I don't know where to start. Senior management are truly awful, each of them are looking for personal gain. They rarely have a joint vision that is in the best of the whole business. Its more finger pointing and pushing personal agendas, which as a result impacts their teams by putting unnecessary stress and ends up pitting teams against each other. There is no real strategy, its just whoever shouts the loudest and monopolises the technical development team's time. The lack of ownership by the senior management is astonishing, with them regularly throwing their own team under the bus (then expect some kind of loyalty when it comes to covering their awful decisions. One of the tasks we were asked to do by them was to generate a £1 million idea, firstly have no idea why this is something everyone else needs to do with no support from senior management, secondly if I had a £1 million idea why would you share it with your employer? Resources are limited with a highly stressed tech team who are run by a CTO whose best interest is things for themselves. Any hiring ability is budgeted by a board who insist on offering very low salaries which means you are unable to hire people with the right skillset. HR are non-existent, if you have a query about processes or any issues there isn't anywhere to go. They are extremely defensive and pretend that staff happiness and morale is not an issue and more so not their problem. HR are incapable of handling serious issues such as bullying, racism and discrimination and providing the necessary support required during these grievance processes. Prestige is given to staff members who have been with the company for a long time and not based on the skillset. This is a pure play company where people do not understand basic ecommerce concept e.g. UTM tracking, what a fiscal year is, the difference between pageviews and sessions, how to calculate margin, the list is endless. Due to this younger, newer and more digital savvy team members are put under huge stress to make up for the work and knowledge gap. There is no formal process for salary reviews. Going through this process is highly insulting, regardless of whether you out perform or under perform you are treated the same. There is a board who have never met you that decide whether you are worth a promotion or a raise. However, with my earlier point of senior management looking out for themselves, conveniently do well by fighting their corner and leave you with an embarrassing amount and tell you you should be happy with that amount. With this ridiculous and muddy process there is no way to actually motivate your team, ultimately their efforts don't matter.
