- Career progression has become very difficult. Doing a good job is no longer enough to get promoted. To go from mid-level to senior, you now need to lead an "initiative" and effectively be a lead developer. Alternatively, you can also demonstrate influence and leadership in other ways, but the bar still seems to be quite high. Weirdly, you're not expected to take a lead role or be otherwise influential once you've reached senior level (or if you're hired as a senior straight away). You can just go back to being a contributor. The expectations seem a bit unbalanced and unfair.
- The promotion process is now by (self-) nomination (rather than your people manager putting you forward). If you're not confident or good at selling yourself you're unlikely to get anywhere.
- PaperCut strongly subscribes to the idea that everyone want's to be a leader. There are various leadership nurture programs, you get coached and mentored to develop your leadership skills, and most company meetings and People & Culture activities are centred around promoting and facilitating leadership. Your nose will be rubbed in it 24/7 and it sends out quite a strong message that contributors are not really valued anymore. That used to be different back in the day.
- Pay rises are determined based on feedback provided by peers you nominate. You need to get ridiculously good results (like a 98% approval rate). If you only score 97%, you're in the "performing" range and get the same standard pay rise as someone who only scores 60%. One person giving you a negative answer for one of the questions can also kick you out of the over-performing range (even if you still reach the 98% threshold). It's next to impossible to get a pay rise above average.
- Your people manager is at liberty to nominate additional people to provide feedback for your pay review. They can nominate themselves and other people who (they think) might not give you the best rating. The peer sentiment survey was originally introduced to filter out the people manager's cognitive bias, but it creeps back in when managers can just add nominations as they please. It's also a bit unfair that some people managers add nominations, while others let you get through with your own nominations only. It's not a level playing field for all employees.
- If the feedback gathered for the pay review puts you in the under-performing range, you'll be put on a performance plan (it didn't happen to me but to someone I know). If so, don't expect any support from People & Culture. They rather support the manager to mob you out of the company. The case that I witnessed completely eradicated my trust in the People & Culture team.
- While working in some teams is really great, others can feel very different with an arrogant and condescending demeanour coming from the management/leads. The last team I worked in was awesome and I would fully recommend it. But another one, that I was part of, made it into the top 2 of the worst work environments in my 15 years in the industry.
- Although it doesn't happen often, PaperCut does not have any problems with kicking people out. There were quite a few cases of employments being deemed "no longer mutually suitable". During a restructure a year or so ago, multiple people were sacked solely because their positions no longer existed in the new structure. I can't recall any software engineers being made redundant, though. It predominantly affects people in other functions.
- In the "new ways of working" people are expected to move across the organisation from project to project (now called "initiative"). You might get a new people manager all the time. They won't keep track of what you do or how you perform, and they're not your advocate anymore.
- You might have to apply for your next initiative. Displaying an exaggerated level of excitement and motivation might be needed to get the gig. You might also be told that you're not good enough and that the leads have opted for a more qualified candidate. You might end up in an initiative that everyone else tried to stay away from.
- There's a lot of management talk that most people don't understand. Company meetings are filled with stories about "north stars", "pixies" and "regional connectors". PaperCut generally believes that everyone has an incredibly keen interest in everything that's going on across the whole business. Even if you're just a regular software developer, you will spend hours and hours listening to stories about the attempts to increase sales in certain industries, seeing statistics gathered from email marketing campaigns and being briefed on the internal selection process for newly invented senior management roles. It's all presented in a rather tiring way.
- I did not feel a bond with the People & Culture team. They previously called themselves Employee Experience Advocates, but I personally did not perceive them as being my advocate. They radiate a high level of self-believe and optimism, run loads of surveys and believe that they listen to and help people. But nowadays they only propagate and push through ideas and directions coming from the management.
