decent benefits but systemic hypocrisy & downhill work environment
Pros
- friendly colleagues from range of nationalities and sense of teamwork - decent benefits (free company healthcare, additional dental and cash reward health plans available at reduced rate, possible to buy up to 10 extra days holidays/year, cycle to work grant...) and hybrid flexible working available (in theory). - opportunity for training in some teams - collaborations across functions (other R&D teams, marketing...) and across countries
Cons
- routine understaffing in most RD teams - frequent denial from management of workloads and understaffing - Heavy HSE burden on employees at all levels but mostly tick box or things that require efforts from front line staff (actual safety improvement that would cost money to the company are refused or severely delayed) - old and poorly supported IT (slow, frequent issues), poor HR support (when recruiting, supporting new joiners/leavers...) - poor & cheap design of work facilities (not accessible to disabled staff) - poor planning from higher management that front line staff are then expected to compensate for at the last minute - lack of listening to employees in decisions that impact them - many job adverts/job description misrepresenting actual job - endless time wasted in meetings that result in no actions - constant bragging from PR team about great company values and "best place to work award" not reflected by actual working conditions in most teams - big salary and working conditions gap between R&D (poor) and corporate functions (marketing...) and between R&D staff with different managers - cosmetic approach to fixing problems (wellbeing webinars instead of fixing workloads/bullying/lack of recognition issues for ex) - frequent restructuring (from team/middle management reshuffle to company wide redundancies) that seldom lead to actual improvements - performance bonus not based on objective performance but competition against other staff - salary adjustment for inflation not available to management level roles and no longer available for new joiners (even of lower level roles) - company increasing contractual hours for recent new joiners leading to unfair situation and guilt pressure on "older" staff
