Genuinely fascinating company, from concept to product in a top-end domain
Pros
Dynamic, agile and exciting environment, working with professionals. A place to bring your A-game, to learn and to share your own experience. I've worked for global mega corps before and you work on tiny parts of products, many that never see light of day - insulated from the realities of the market to a large extent. Here seems so much more electric; when concepts are committed to the pipeline they go from nothing to fully fledged products. You get to see the creative process up close, with in house engineering teams, world wide factories and suppliers coming together, running software designed and written by the software and UI teams. I'll never get bored of the gestation of ideas to physical reality in months. It takes excellent teamwork to make it happen, from the product owners, engineering, supply chain, sales and marketing. Flexi-working so you are not mandated to a fixed 9-5. Some semi-remote options are available for some roles There's an on-site canteen which is pretty cheap and decent too!
Cons
it's on a bland industrial estate off J9 of the M27 so pre-pandemic, the traffic was a slog and sometimes, due to accidents, horrendous. There's no going for a walk at lunchtime and popping in to a chi-chi deli for lunch, I'm afraid you'll have to settle for a Toolstation or a B&Q. Whitely shopping centre is just over the M27 so at a push you could drive to Wagas or M&S for lunch. 25 days holiday with no ramp for service or extra days to purchase. No option to trade down to part-time work if you need it, which is also short-sighted and inflexible. Fully remote work is only available to permanent staff under exceptional conditions. Promotion comes with extra responsibilities but no extra money. Very poor at staff retention - If you want a pay rise, you have to find yourself another job and then approach your manager, by which time you don't care what they say anyway.