At the forefront of Digital Health - Senior Scientific Advisor medDigital Employee Review

Flexible working, remote working (not as good as it used to be though). You fit work around your schedule / commitments / family life very easily You claim claim time off in lieu for long hours which helps Work can be very rewarding, but depends on your projects (they can be soul destroying if not a fit) Team is quite good and cover each other well Occasional team socials, although the budget for these has collapsed Broad range of projects which open doors, can double and triple salary with exit opportunities Very diverse (ethnically) and offering opportunities for ambitious women (employees almost entirely female) Manager's pet snake (see below)

Classic consulting problems like over-promising work the company has no experience in and then staff having to deal with it (and getting blamed if they don't), plus some medDigital-specific issues. Overall, management has a reputation for being unreliable with the staff, aloof, and out of touch until clients complain. Lots of "managing upwards" which isn't really a positive. Intense gossip. Manager will be managing projects, badly, and then gaslight you when things don't get done even though you weren't told to do anything. Big problem where Manager expects new staff to manage their projects for them without actually telling you that you're the project manager, or communicating that you need to do their job totally while technically being marked down as an assistant (meanwhile they tell the client that the Manager is managing the project). You get blamed when their projects go badly due to their inability to manage projects, people or communicate. Flexible hours is exploited by management to normalise long hours at times - not uncommon to have people working very late particularly when having to cover management's mistakes. It's celebrated when new employees bill hours or work excessive hours on their first day or week. Very few if any have time to finish their mandatory new starter training (there's a lot of it) because of the over-work which can start quickly. (But time off in lieu does help with this) Bizarre rules from Manager saying the team is not allowed to send emails or take calls with HR / IT director who allegedly lives on a mountain and doesn't like being disturbed, leading to this person taking on mythical qualities. When you eventually talk with the person in question we found that they're actually normal and friendly, which was confusing. I think this rule is gone now though, and at one point they did a dramatic reveal where he showed up in person to prove he exists. This is funny but not normal and was a bit uncomfortable at times. Company stopped investing in its flagship product and fell behind competitors, leading to a chicken and egg situation where they didn't want to invest in it because they felt they could never compete. Manager blames negative internal survey feedback on the latest person to leave and has been known to use inflammatory language to describe certain leavers, which makes staff feel uncomfortable Management scares employees with threats of being sued if they go to other companies that might be doing something even vaguely related. Worth noting you do have to sign a non-compete when you join, but it is extremely restrictive (6 months after leaving) and the management is very litigious. Something to bear in mind when thinking about how the role might fit your future career plans If you get a job offer from another company and resign they might try to counteroffer, and then once you accept the counteroffer and turn down the other job offers the promised pay increase will never materialise, leading to burned bridges both at medDigital and at the other companies you were interviewing at, plus months wasted and low morale. Manager moves goal posts a lot with promotions and pay rises. Common for Manager to agree to a plan and then pretend they never agreed when they change their mind (more below). After a positive formal performance review, the Manager suddenly pretended someone's performance was atrocious and that they must resign immediately otherwise they would be sacked. This was a ploy to get them to leave without paying them the annual bonus (in the one year where the bonus was decent) because management over-hired and bonuses aren't paid to people serving a notice period. This led to mysterious disappearances of employees, In this situation, they also tried to prevent an employee they were forcing out from going to work at a competitor when they were fortunate enough to get an offer so quickly. None of this was communicated to the other employees so it came as a shock when 2 people suddenly disappeared without a good handover and projects got messed with as a result. Around this time, there was also a weird instance where the Manager held a sudden, unannounced all-hands meeting leading to people being worried for their jobs. As the call unfolded, the Manager gave a speech about Blue Monday being the most depressing day of the year and needing to cheer his employees up. It now seems this was related to the behind-the-scenes drama with the disappearing employees being either forced out or made redundant (based on whether they were liked by management) affecting the Manager's mood or possibly feeling bad about what was happening. But then the Manager took out his pet snake on camera, stroking and playing with it to entertain the other employees who all had their cameras off. It was quite entertaining and surreal, especially as we went into the call expecting a bad announcement, but I'm not sure it was really appropriate in the circumstances and may have caused more stress with the way it unfolded given job security worries. On the "no handover" thing above. If you resign you are told by management not to hand over your work until your last day of your notice, as they're trying to squeeze as much out of you as possible. If an employee leaves normally then the handover is usually still handled better than this as they care about their colleagues and clients, but on occasions when people leave suddenly this causes big problems as they may only have a few days before leaving. The bonus structure described in the offer is not accurately reflected by what you'll probably get, the manager will say it's (up to) 10% but in reality it's only ever been that in one year out of the company's history to my knowledge, it's almost always been 3% ish or nothing Pay is very inconsistent between employees doing the same work Company has shrunk in size a lot, isn't growing, and pretends to clients that it's still the same size as before they fired lots of people Company has a major problem with investing in itself leading to a death spiral Manager likes to flaunt an expensive lifestyle and holidays and tesla etc in front of the staff of mostly young women being paid pennies during a cost-of-living crisis. Not ill intentioned, but could do with being a bit more mindful Career progression internally is a bit of a myth as you can only really become a Senior. It's a classic "do the job of a senior X to get the promotion", which by the time it comes is overdue and then there's already nothing internal to aim for. This might be changing now but it is a small company struggling to grow, so bear that in mind The company is hyper-focused on IT security, more so than other companies and to an amusing extent. This has steadily led to a drop in quality of life and the loss of key perks. You used to be able to work remotely from abroad (but with UK office hours) but this has gone now as they deactivate your devices if they leave the UK without IT specifically allowing it for that country, time and date range. This can cause a lot of inconvenience, particularly when things go wrong, as it means the device has to be sent back to the office to be reactivated. One employee was locked out of their device in the Republic of Ireland and had to drive to Northern Ireland and stay in a hotel there while IT tried to figure out how to reactivate their device remotely. On another occasion an employee was locked out in Greece and the rumour was they just resigned on the spot instead of taking the device back immediately. Of course, they just mysteriously disappeared without any explanation, so we had to go off rumour again.

- Flexible working - kind of friendly environment (I have been in much better work environments but it is ok.)

- projects come and go super quick. You wake up every day and you don’t know what you’ll do within your working hours. It is supposed to be agile, but there are times where you struggle to keep yourself motivated - the 2 owners are always absent. The one is literally in another location and the other you may get to see him once a month. This is unacceptable for a start up company where the seniors need to inspire you. Even when you meet, too much blah blah blah and less what they believe. So don’t expect to get an honest opinion on your skills or something that you can work up on to improve.