Pros
* Centrally located Irish office a few steps off Grafton street, a bit cramped however and not the best facilities (old building), large very noisy open plan office spaces (noise cancelling headphones are a must) * Salaries on the higher end of the Irish IT job market * Average RSUs and 10% bonus structure * Good tech in Data teams – the latest and greatest Big Data/AI/ML tools mostly (however not so modern tech in other teams as there’s still quite a bit of legacy) * Free snacks, drinks and all that stuff if you care * Free lunche once a week * Good and generally helpful local HR department making good efforts in organizing company events etc * In general, good, knowledgeable engineers, but this depends very much on team and their managers
Cons
* Very stressful and high pressure environment, especially in DataEng, Infra and DataOps teams. The more senior the managers, the worse the attitude and disconnect they have from lower level employees. * Look for warning signs during your interview – as with any other company, suggest to pay special attention to the managers interviewing you and their attitude, everything matters and can be very revealing of the team you end up working in. If you don't like it, go with your gut instinct rather than risking problems - being randomly fired and similar, as it happens A LOT here, you will get fired with almost no notice, receiving a pro-forma one-week performance improvement plan that will not even get reviewed properly as that is not the real problem. Suggest to start collecting evidence (unpaid on call duties and schedules violating Irish workplace laws, etc) if you notice things starting to go shady and borderline. * Depending on the team, you might be happy, but overall, I'd say it's a dysfunctional, even toxic workplace for most teams here. Most of the positive reviews on Glassdoor come from managers, if you haven’t noticed already. * Senior managers and directors mostly disconnected from teams they manage, offering no regular support but very high expectations. Lower level managers are probably experiencing quite a stressful environment here. * No on-boarding process, lack of proper written documentation, a culture of secrecy even between team members, you might get one or two one-hour meetings during your onboarding period and that’s all - you’re expected to figure things out on your own and make friends with the right people. This is a place to write obfuscated code as nobody cares about proper written documentation and code comments. * High pressure among employees (many on sponsored visas) causing them to compete against each other instead of supporting, helping and collaborating * In some teams at least, a clear trend and preference towards employing offshore employees who are bound to the company by their sponsorship of their visas/work permits, so expect a lot of self-centered and competitive employees finding even the most minor flaws in your own work and making them disproportionately appear as large issues to leads and managers – political darwinian games a visa-bound employee needs to play along to survive. * A bad work culture disregarding work life balance: overwork, ultra-competitiveness even among team members, if you complain about this (unpaid on-calls...) and offer reasonable improvement suggestions you WILL get fired. * A clear visible trend of downsizing their USA based offices and re-hiring for the same roles in their expanding Dublin EU headquartered office, cutting on their workforce costs and probably availing of Ireland’s tax haven status (of course, other companies do this too). Clear focus on short-term share price only in the quarterly public company wide meetings. Lack of long term vision – CTOs changing every year. Hardcore capitalism at its finest, lack of any principles, unethical practices, complying with self-censorship where authoritarian countries request them to do so, and similar dubious practices. * Note the same job adverts popping up every couple of months - this is a hire & fire place - you will be fired if you don't conform to their unreasonable expectations. Multiple team members I worked with that ever raised a slightest issue did get fired eventually. This is a place for yes-men only. Very unethical and unprofessional. I've never seen an IT company with such a high staff turnover. * Completely unpaid and uncompensated on-calls, crazy schedules with sometimes up to 24 hours and 3 weeks per month of on-call duty per team member. Disorganised, unoptimised on-call paging setups triggering low priority alarms at night hours regularly. If you like to work for free and being woken up at 3am regularly, go for it. You will be given no holidays in lieu of the on calls. You might hope for a role promotion someday perhaps. * If you’d like to work here and are willing to take the risk for a somewhat above-market average salary and benefits, suggest you to find and talk to an insider here first - ask them team about the team you’re applying for and their work culture to get the real picture, and pay attention during the interview process – ask the right questions. Otherwise, RUN AWAY!
