Great facilities and reputation. Terrible leadership and atmosphere - Finance Director Sage Employee Review

2.0
16 Sept 2017
Recommend
CEO approval
Business outlook

Pros

Company has a great reputation, product and working facilities.

Cons

Disorganised sales strategy and business planning process. Amateur finance processes and systems (ironically). Overpromising to board and investors, resulting in underperformance despite positive growth against last year. Leadership does not care about staff - happy to sack people to achieve their bonus targets. Senior global sales leaders lead by shouting 'sell more' with no vision on how to do it. Confused, disorganised, overworked and staff under the constant fear or being performance managed out or made redundant by the thousands.

avatar
Sage Response
8y
Firstly, thanks for taking the time to write your review. Your feedback matters and what you say concerns us. We have a Code of Conduct that provides a clear set of rules for colleagues and when they see something that goes against the Code they are encouraged to discuss with their manager, their People Business Partner or a SafeCall number, which is free and confidential. If you would like to discuss further please contact me lynne.ellis-parker@sage.com. Leading@Sage is the development program providing leaders with the tools and techniques to help their teams flourish in a high performance customer focused environment – and this includes coaching as a way to help colleagues reach their full potential here. Shouting at colleagues is not acceptable and not tolerated – it is the sort of behaviour that goes against our Code of Conduct. Our culture encourages ambition, simplification, and bias for action at pace and our finance team takes immense pride in putting our customers first and foremost. It is important of course that we continuously improve so we review, invest and develop our systems and internal processes all the time. It is disappointing that your experience has not matched expectations, but we appreciate your feedback and wish you well.

Explore other reviews about Sage

5.0
23 May 2026
Recommend
CEO approval
Business outlook

Pros

Working at Sage these past 4 years has been both rewarding and energizing. I’ve really valued the opportunity to collaborate with talented teams across the business while helping evolve our Developer Content organization into a broader developer experience and AI-enabled function. One of the most meaningful parts of the experience has been seeing how open people are to innovation, collaboration, and continuous improvement. It’s been exciting to contribute to initiatives that improve both internal workflows and the experience for our developer community. I’m grateful for the relationships, growth opportunities, and trust I’ve been given throughout the year, and I’m looking forward to what’s ahead.

Cons

With so much innovation and transformation happening across the company, priorities can evolve quickly — but it also creates exciting opportunities to learn, adapt, and contribute to meaningful change.

3.0
15 Apr 2026
Recommend
CEO approval
Business outlook

Pros

-Pay’s decent -Benefits are solid -The Sage Foundation feels like proper philanthropy -Some genuinely nice people -If you’re happy treating work as just a payslip and don’t mind things being a bit dull, Sage is actually quite a comfortable place to be. That stability is a real perk

Cons

-Far too many layers of middle management and general bureaucracy -The Ai push is getting a bit daft -Not especially innovative, so the work can feel quite uninspiring. I’m grateful to be employed, but if you’re after something more interesting, Sage will probably disappoint. That said, some people prefer it that way, fair enough -The office / hybrid requirements feel a bit pointless -Sage doesn’t tend to do layoffs, which is good, but it does mean there are quite a few people where you’re not entirely sure what they do. A lot of meetings, essentially. Even the positives come with trade-offs

4
avatar
Sage Response
1mo
Thank you for taking the time to share your thoughtful and balanced review. We’re pleased to hear that you value your compensation and benefits, as well as the work our Foundation do, among the areas you’ve highlighted. We also recognise the points you’ve raised around bureaucracy, innovation, and the pace and focus of change. Different people are motivated by different things at work, and it’s helpful to hear honest perspectives on how our structure, processes, and priorities can impact day‑to‑day experience and engagement. Feedback like yours helps inform ongoing conversations as we continue to evolve our ways of working, use technology more meaningfully, and improve the products and experiences we create for our customers. If you’re open to sharing further insight, we encourage you to do so through our Always Listening survey. Thank you again for your openness and for being part of Sage.
See reviews by: Helpful|Rating|Date|All