Avantages
The young team is extremely supportive with a great spirit of comradery. The technology is nascent but promising and there is scope for new starters to take on much more responsibility than in other businesses.
Inconvénients
The company is run by two co-CEOs who have not delegated management responsibility to any other person despite tripling the amount of personnel, which has resulted in them being the sole line managers for 30 people. Performance reviews are done every three months with no written record or plans made for progress which leads to complete career stagnation. When I discussed the fact that I had raised complaints in previous 1to1s, I was told: 'we manage so many people, it's impossible to give full attention to one person'. Newness and speed to market are prioritised over due diligence, with a prevailing attitude that any cracks should be painted over until the next fundraise when the can of worms can be reopened. This is completely antithetical to the ideas of sustainability that Notpla puports to uphold. The vast majority of production work is done in house (by hand) to make passable prototypes for customers and investors. This is where most of Notpla's resources are invested, with the necessary industrialisation work continuously being undermined and delayed by management indecision. Anyone who opposes suggestions or contradicts this mentality of 'never say die' (sic) is perceived as being negative and put under review. As a result, interns and consultants are regularly hired to reanalyse work done by full time employees that they do not have the appropriate knowledge, experience or time to dissect. Said full time employees are constantly questioned, denied requests for resources and publicly undermined until it is impossible to continue the project work without making concessions. Despite only superficially checking in on people's work, Notpla has a culture of complete micro-management. Daily briefings require employees to report on their previous day's work to the whole company and a lot of attention is paid to people's working hours, but minimal attention is paid to the content of their work or their needs to progress it (ie. keep your head down and look busy). There is an archaic mentality regarding home working and lip service is paid to being flexible which does not translate to any meaningful work/life balance. The expectation is that you will spend all of your time on site and willingly work unpaid overtime in order to get the job done. Wages are bottom of the barrel for the location and the level of responsibility employees are expected to take on. Equity is minimal.