I've never been a person to complain about jobs, it is a pet peeve of mine. However, this place will pull the wool over your eyes before joining in terms of work-life balance and expectations. I came from a big 4 practice background so overtime at busy periods was completely normal to me, but this was exceptional. The GL team was mainly based in the states and my belfast GL team were all expected to work to our own hours and then the american evenings hours, most being on past 11pm in the evenings. The management showed absolutely no understanding of the timezone difference with the west coast, and expected you to drop everything you planned for an evening to appease their poor review process. It was a horrible experience, and myself and my GL colleagues who had recently joined, all left within 2 months of joining. I enjoy work, but the finance function in this place is not fit for purpose and expected too much from such little support. Management were inpersonal and robotic, with no ability to take on board feedback being raised.
In summary:
- you will be expected to work evenings for weeks at a time every quarter - it was 14/15 hour days for nearly 2 weeks, with evenings calls in quiet period 2 times a week minimum
- management have no desire to improve this balance
- was told by Senior Manager that leave requests at last 6/7 days of a month and first 10 days each month, and first 21 days each quarter, would not be approved.
Overall, very happy to have left, and glad my colleagues left too, who I'm still in touch with now because we joke about how much of a nightmare this place was.
