Simply Business reviews

Tech rules. If you do not work in a defined tech role be prepared for your opinions to be sidelined and to be generally treated as a subordinate. This is despite huge inadequacies in the management of engineers which has generated a collective of many that are unmotivated, working at a velocity level that is in the lowest quartile within the financial service industry (substantiated by a recent study). Massive duplication of effort, refinement by mass committee and no time deadlines attached to delivery tasks all have created a tech function that take advantage of the situation and SB's desperation to hold on to tech people due to recruitment problems in sourcing engineers. Anyone would think that these people were finding the cure for cancer not in fact trying to sell insurance policies, no one is indispensible and reprimands as well as praise need to be seen to be delivered to ensure work stops hanging round for long periods of time. Sadly the velocity and lack of work motivation by the engineering division has a massive effect on all other areas as due to the way the company has been structured everything ultimately requires engineer buy in and resource. The way the teams have been modelled around the Marty Cagan model of 6-8 engineers and one product manager has enabled work output to not be as transparent vs other companies. Indeed, so many teams are working on such loose remits; overlap and countless meetings to discuss such overlaps are regularly undertaken. As well as this, the team construct enables engineers to hide behind excuses such as team size and or lack of knowledge, as movement between teams to dilute knowledge and skillsets is not something that is encouraged. Innovation is constantly talked about but sadly until real impetus for delivery and management of tech roles namely engineering, occurs the company will continue to work on basic optimsation and or clean ups of legacy technical debt for many more years.

Pay is shocking, especially if you work in the tech team. Get a promotion or payrise? Expect £5 and a mars bar. People Team are dismissive of burnout, mental health, stress and any kind of illness. They are there to protect the business, not to support or care for any employee. Most of them moved from a Learning and Development role, into a People Partner role - how that’s acceptable is beyond me. TA team removes bad reviews of the company from websites. Redundancies of core/talented people with no communication, treatment of people is appalling. No support from high level management on big technological transformational projects. Shared Services is a bullish and dictatorial place. Managers are set up to fail. Career framework has been promised in tech for years - nothing.