Pros
Some very good members of staff to learn from - there are some smart people in the company who are willing to take the time to teach you stuff. The lower management and general members of staff are the backbone of the company and they've generally hired pretty well. Opportunities to grow into new positions - It's a fast-moving place, if you can handle the pressure then there's room within a year or so to get a promotion. Product - Like again, pretty good. I mean, there are a lot of cracks in the product we got to fill manually, that's why we have large ops dept, and for sure over-sold by Marketing and Sales. But, some startups it's 100% fabricated, but there is some genuinely good tech at Red Points.
Cons
Management - Some leaders are there to make a name for themselves and are not willing to listen to staff who have been there for a while. There a lot of egos in senior management, not all, but a lot don't really care for their staff or what they have to say. Goals - I've worked at tech companies before and I know the game, goals are always high. But in this case I've got to say, the growth goals are promises made by the CEO to the board the company can't deliver. The numbers don't add up and the team always falls very, very short of the objectives. CEO- It's never easy being at the top, I get that. But in this case, the CEO refuses to acknowledge the reality of the situation. Referring to the goals, when the team fell below target, like normal, despite the team working their butts off and hustling at all times for deals - the CEO's response was that people were not working hard enough. For me, that was a childish response. Whether this was because she knows the reality and can't admit it or she really does believe in the promises they've made, I don't know. CEO is a tough job and she's got her talents for sure, but too often the CEO doesn't treat people with respect, and for me, that's got to be the basis of any professional relationship. Inter-department working - I gotta say, the pressure put on each department results in some pretty testy relationships. We gotta sell a lot, this means we didn't always put through the perfect client, this means customer care (who are also understaffed) get pretty annoyed when they've got a client they can't service properly. Ops, same story, customer care get messages from less than happy clients because stuff hasn't gone according to plan, but this is because ops don't have the number to service them. This is goal-related again, high targets mean Marketing send pretty low-quality leads to sales, then we got to convert them. From my time there, marketing leadership is pretty crappy, to be honest. Overall, there's a real disregard for staff. Like HR dept sell you a cool startup when you join, and the recruitment team do sell the company pretty well. But, when you're in there, there's no real push from senior management to try and keep staff happy, it's a much more corporate vibe. If you want to work for a startup/scaleup this isn't the place. There are worse places to work, there are some nice perks and good, smart people. On the other hand, there are for sure better options out there - companies where you have a chance of hitting objectives and there is a more analytical approach to performance. No jobs are without pressure but here, it's not sustainable.
