Realex Payments Reviews

Pros

Great city centre location with lots of transport routes and solid choice of places to eat. This area of Dublin is only going to get better with the new building work that is going on around the office. Realex is a fantastic place to grow your career if you're willing to apply yourself. You'll be working with some very best people and the latest technology. On occasion you may have to dabble with some older tech so you'll be getting a wide variety of experience. Realex lately are quite flexible in terms of the work environment, having recently renovated the desktops in favour of laptops, there are quite a few people working remotely when it better suits them. There seems to be a lot of opportunity for travel if you're in to that. Free coffee and lots of free fruit. Occasionally there is beer and pizza in the office while someone gets to show off something clever that they've been working on. Great social aspect to working at Realex, you'll probably be out on the tear with your colleagues a lot. Sports and Social have a healthy budget too, for company social events, they organise all sorts from Secret Santa, to charity based events, to cinema trips and the odd drinking session.

Cons

The open plan office can be a bit counter productive sometimes and for the number of people in the Dublin office it can be a bit cramped in certain areas and at certain times. It's fine if you get yourself a pair of noise cancelling headphones. The laptop screens are ultra low resolution, so despite having the mobility, you're tied to your desk. No breaking away for some quiet time. The culture of the company has changed a bit since Global Payments took over (there are pros and cons to this and if you're joining new then you probably wont see the cons since the cons are largely by contrast).

Advice to Management

Keep improving the company the way you have been. Increase the frequency of the feedback loops you get and implement tangible change based on recurring trends. Create a buzz-word free zone

Pros

Huge opportunity to learn about every minute detail of the payments landscape. Great people, seriously, the best. Dublin has an infectiously positive outlook.

Cons

It's an old-school corporation trying to be a technology company by doing the minimum amount possible. The politics would embarrass Westminster. Choices based on short term results are frustrating. Legacy attitudes are dangerous. It's an old-school corporation trying to be a technology company by doing the minimum amount possible.

Advice to Management

Think different.

Pros

Good people to work with

Cons

Very micro managed. Management no interest in teams

Pros

some perks like nespresso coffee, pool table, S&S etc, made some good friends there

Cons

poor salary, reluctant to give earned bonuses and increases unless you were deemed valuable, some managers who thought they were untouchable and were very resistant to change or suggested improvements if it didn't fit their way of thinking, the assignment of busy work in the very rare time when we were not slammed due to staff shortages or just poor product releases that were clearly not QA'ed at all.

Advice to Management

stop being tight get an IVR line rather than expecting Support to be secretaries

Pros

Some good people, nice work environment, good office and a decent work life balance

Cons

Can feel like a frat house at times. Ok pay but a bit behind the market rates. Colm Lyon will be missed.

Advice to Management

You're doing something wrong anyway, the turnover of devs is ridiculous

Pros

The people are all generally nice, and friendly. The product development team do some genuinely interesting work. The SDLC had some severe problems before but is genuinely improving lately. (At time of writing, that is.) Certain teams also give great opportunities to gain experience and skills. Okay benefits.

Cons

Where to begin? The platform operations department are overworked and under-resourced. Look forward to a life of your suggestions for improvement being dismissed, ignored, or responded to with hostility. Teams often have conflicting goals on shared projects leading to strife, and people just trying to cover themselves. As mentioned, some roles give great opportunities to learn and move, others do not. Many roles offer no route to grow. Morale throughout the organisation is low, bar a few teams who are beacons of positivity in an otherwise gloomy atmosphere where people are persistently under severe pressure to meet deadlines while juggling business as usual tasks with no chance of improving processed. I don't see much hope in the long term prospects of the platform teams. Pay is poor, unless you're one of the few positions deemed valuable. Most staff paid well below market average with a few golden children kept on very handsome salaries.

Advice to Management

Don't allow people to run teams by virtue of being there the longest. Just because you're most senior doesn't mean you have any leadership skills. There's a few team leads who could do with being bounced to something they're more suited to. Not that they're not talented, just that their talents aren't in team leadership or people management.

Pros

high bonus per bank holiday

Cons

There's No extra hours paid

Pros

Good city centre location, VHI coverage (after probation), generally nice people (though some grumpy!) and a foot in the door for recent grads.

Cons

An initial salary which was worse than retail, a mandatory 'on call' service for senior support staff with god awful renumeration, a lack of automation and an IT graduate programme which provides little exposure to tech but plenty of exposure to surly small business owners.

Advice to Management

Stop adopting the short term and superficial 'quick buck' approach coming from across the Atlantic. Go back to what made Realex a great company by creating a vision and building a philosophy that makes great products for customers and provides an encouraging work environment from employees, otherwise obscurity beckons.