Attractive compensation, challenging internal dynamics - Drector Beyond ONE Employee Review

Hires talented people from well-known companies. Ambitious vision and exciting ideas. Modern office with good facilities.

This is, without a doubt, the most toxic workplace I’ve ever experienced. The senior tech leadership has no clue what they’re doing. Every few months there’s a new direction, a new buzzword, and a new “strategy.” It honestly feels like the leadership spends more time making things look good than actually building a product that works. I genuinely feel the CEO is being sold a picture that is very different from reality. The attrition is insane. People are hired from all over the world, relocate their entire lives to Dubai, move their spouses, transfer their kids into new schools, and then get laid off a few months later because leadership decides to replace entire teams after the product doesn’t meet expectations. It doesn’t matter whether you’ve been there for three years or three weeks—if they decide to reset, you’re gone. And because this is Dubai, losing your job isn’t just losing your job. Your visa is tied to your employment, so many people suddenly find themselves having to pack up their lives and leave the country. It’s heartbreaking to watch. The latest grand vision is turning their telecom platform into “Telecom as a Service.” Honestly, it’s laughable. They struggle to manage the technology for their own telecom operations, yet somehow believe they can sell it as a service to others. It’s another shiny idea while the core problems remain unsolved. Another pattern that employees are well aware of is the layoffs that happen before annual bonuses are due. Every year, around the same time, people start wondering if they’ll survive until bonus day. The atmosphere genuinely feels like Squid Game—everyone waiting to see whose name comes up next. The company hires talented people with big promises and an inspiring vision, only to let many of them go before they’ve even had a chance to make an impact. By the time I left, it felt like almost everyone was either actively interviewing elsewhere or just trying to survive until they found something better. If you’re being sold on the fancy vision during interviews, ask hard questions. Speak to former employees. My experience was that the vision sounded incredible, but the execution was complete chaos.

- Some really great people who joined with a passion to make something bigger out of telecom, fintech and other products. Many senior leaders truly care about their teams and provide a lot of support. - Very friendly people outside of Dubai HQ. - Great salaries and health insurance, nice offices.

- Frequent people turnover and [silent] layoffs. - Dubai HQ is super political and stabbing in the back is the way of survival there. - Long-term company vision is fully superseded by short-term revenue squeeze, no matter what it takes. Forget about sweet words about investing in the future - this smoke disappears as soon as the revenue dives (= most of the time). - Concept of shared services completely fails for non-telco businesses as the majority of the people are from telecom industry and have no passion for anything else.