Multiverse Senior Software Engineer reviews

1.5

10% would recommend to a friend

(5 total reviews)

Euan Blair

5% approve of CEO

5% positive business outlook

Reviews by job title

5 reviews
1.0
4 Sept 2025
Recommend
CEO approval
Business outlook

Pros

The only genuine positive is the colleagues on the ground. Talented, capable, collaborative people who hold things together despite the chaos.

Cons

Return-to-office (RTO) disaster: After years of hiring remote-first and selling flexibility as a competitive advantage, leadership reversed course overnight. They already knew ~30% of tech would resign as a result. That isn’t “AI-era alignment” (as it’s spun in town halls); it’s a quiet headcount reduction. Expect HR to frame it as “collaboration” and “intentional in-office time,” but for those affected, it was nothing more than broken promises. Dishonest communication: Benefits and policies are constantly reframed as if they’re improvements. Example: the 4 “M-Powered” wellbeing days became a forced 2-day summer shutdown. Instead of simply saying “we can’t sustain this as we scale,” it was spun as “better for everyone.” This tone — upbeat on the surface, corrosive underneath — runs through all comms. You’ll often hear “we value transparency,” but in practice, candour is absent. Mission drift: The original mission — apprenticeships as a real alternative to university, unlocking potential over privilege — inspired people. That’s gone. The pivot to “AI upskilling” feels shallow and investor-led. HR will insist “we aren’t upskilling for the elite,” but when the only people celebrating the shift are the CEO and investors chasing higher returns, the intent is clear. On the ground, no one believes this is a “great idea.” Leadership vacuum: Reorgs and churn are constant. Middle managers are ineffective because they’re being pulled in all directions without stability. Chaos here isn’t agility; it’s just chaos. When leaders say “change is a constant at a fast-growing scale-up,” it’s not reassurance — it’s how dysfunction is normalised. The CEO himself seems more focused on media interviews and cultivating the Multiverse brand than building a coherent product. Ask yourself: what even is the product right now? Apprenticeships? AI training? A SaaS platform? No one internally can answer that with confidence — and that should tell you everything. CEO as CTO: When the previous CTO resigned, the CEO simply absorbed the title despite no credible tech background. It gets spun as “Euan leading from the front in our AI-first era,” but engineers know better. If you’re a software engineer, run for the hills: your craft won’t be respected here. Toxic positivity: Comms are relentlessly upbeat, packed with rocket emojis and slogans. Questions in all-hands are filtered, feedback forums are clunky, and asking tough questions is risky. Replies will always sound the same: “we’re listening, we’re evolving, we value your input.” But nothing changes.

avatar
Multiverse Response
8mo
Hi, Thank you for taking the time to share your very detailed feedback. I'm sorry to read that you’ve had such a negative experience, but I do appreciate your candour in giving your perspective. We're going through a lot of change right now as we scale, and as with all periods of fast growth and change, there are going to be some pain points. I hear you, and I appreciate that navigating these periods of change can be challenging and disorienting. I do want to address some of your points. The updates to our hybrid working policy (3 days in the office, up from 2 for most Multiversers) has been part of our new era of working, which we believe will allow us to collaborate faster and learn together. The reality is that for a lot of companies as they scale, they have to make a choice between a hybrid model and a fully remote one; we chose a hybrid one to foster collaboration and community. We have tried to be as intentional as possible with this transition by offering flexibility with arrival and leave times, by improving the office experience with new equipment and additional space. We review our benefits strategy yearly to meet the needs of our employees and have made meaningful improvements to increase our private medical insurance and pension contribution. In the last two years we’ve also given all employees access to free gyms and classes, and continue to have free mental health care services on hand. You also mentioned the shift in our mission and the focus on AI. Our new mission is to equip the workforce to win in the AI era. This shift is about adapting our apprenticeships to meet the urgent and growing need for AI and tech skills in the modern workforce - and setting the course for the AI Era. And in order to achieve our mission, we have to be a successful and sustainable business. We are committed to fostering an environment where people feel they can be honest and candid with their feedback, which is why we have regular pulse surveys and feedback forums. There will always be areas for us to improve, but know that it’s top of mind for us. I am genuinely sorry that you did not enjoy your time with us, and I want to thank you again for the feedback. I wish you all the best in your next step. Paige - VP People Talent
1.0
5 Aug 2025
Recommend
CEO approval
Business outlook

Pros

Good team, but no obvious vision.

Cons

All of a sudden they tell people to return to office and the whole company/teams strategies and ways of working changes. And later we find out they are doing this because they are downsizing.

avatar
Multiverse Response
8mo
Hi, Thank you for taking the time to share your feedback. We are a fast-growth scale-up, and that means things can change quickly. Our goal is to ensure we remain adaptable so we can continue to deliver on our mission, and that includes our strategy and ways of working. We believe that connecting in the office more often (3 days a week) will lead to more impactful collaboration and peer learning. I appreciate you raising these points - please feel free to reach out to your People Partner Olenka if you would like to discuss this further. Paige - VP People Talent
2.0
21 Jul 2024

Huge wasted potential

Recommend
CEO approval
Business outlook

Pros

Lots of talented people work there, Elixir/Phoenix is a fun tech stack to work in, very flexible with remote working.

Cons

Most teams are hugely overworked and overstressed, the only way to get recognition is to go out on your own and pick up the flashiest prototype project you can, leaving the rest of your team shorthanded. Management insist that engineers should be empowered to go and fix problems when they see them, but in reality there's barely enough time to get actual OKR work done, and then they hold their hands up all confused why nothing in the extremely shaky tech is getting fixed, all that engineer-empowerment is just an excuse used to pin responsibility for failures on the engineers. The company likes to tout itself as a mission-driven company for good, giving people an alternate route into employment that doesn't require university, but in reality this makes up an increasingly tiny part of the business. All of the focus and energy is put into the other side of the business that's all about giving companies the tools to upskill existing employees, which is not at all what they like to advertise themselves as. Worse than that, the company is trying to turn itself into "the" way that people get jobs in tech-adjacent roles, without ever stopping to wonder if it's doing that in a way that people actually want. Multiverse is a sinking ship built on shiny figma-prototypes and dodgy tech demos, led by a group that hope if they don't acknowledge the holes, then the ship will stay afloat. But hey, at least the sails look pretty.

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