You will just be a minion - Senior Software Engineer Ocado Group Employee Review

2.0
Sep 15, 2019
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

- smart and friendly colleagues - company is investing in interesting technologies (vertical farming, automation, etc) - opportunity to work on a product at scale - free fruit - free safari online subscription + conferences (if you don't get your request rejected) - company seems to be doing well with a lot of deals signed recently and growing a lot - possibility to change teams

Cons

- people team do not help or care even though they spend an hour explaining to newcomers that they help for everything - you have to chase HR a long time in order to get any answer/legal document - too few toilets, they are always full and seldom clean - code quality is disastrous in Ocean (legacy product) and mediocre in OSP (new product) - impossible to work remotely so everyone lies about having doctor appointments or waiting for deliveries to "justify" working from home - no career growth if you are shy as working outside your team is the only thing that is valued to get promoted - SE4 (highest grade for Software Engineer) is impossible to attain unless you work in the platform team - Social event only happens once every two months and you would be lucky to get a slice of pizza and a beer as there is not enough for everyone - No time is given to improve code or processes - low salary compared to London - if you are unlucky enough to end up in Ocean (legacy product) your career will take a massive hit as technologies and processes are outdated and code quality is abysmal. Management too is outdated in Ocean. - graduate recruits are lured in with promises of working on the new platform with microservices but are then told that there is no room and sent to Ocean - free instant coffee is not good - high turnover

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Ocado Group Response
6y
Thanks for the feedback – it's always useful to get detail we can use to improve. We'll make sure this is passed on so action can be taken where needed. In the meantime, if you have concerns around personal development, we'd strongly recommend speaking to your line manager to work out a plan that's right for you. Also, look out for updates on Slack around the Careers Model as well as Q&As and drop-in sessions.

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Pros

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Cons

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