Pros
Some teams genuinely care about customers, colleagues, and doing the work properly.
Cons
After around 150 people were let go in January, another 130 are now being let go in July. As someone who is fortunate to not directly be impacted by this new round of cuts, I must say it is hard to believe this is simply “business change” when it feels more like a company being stripped down and repackaged around AI as the magical fix for everything. No doubt in a couple of month's time it will be my and my teams turn! Starling under Anne used to feel like a bank with a clear identity and purpose. Now it increasingly feels like a tech experiment that happens to hold a banking licence. The obsession with AI, cost cutting, and “efficiency” has taken priority over the things that made the company different in the first place: strong people, good service, and a sense that the work mattered. Leadership talks about transformation, but from the ground it looks like gutting. The CEO’s track record at OVO makes the current direction feel less like coincidence and more like a pattern: arrive, cut deep, remove what made the company distinct, and move on.
