Money Grabbing, No Growth, No support, No Training, Poor Company Organisation - Avis employé Developer Prodo Digital

Wow that’s a tricky one to respond to as it’s not too constructive, but that said I like to respond to all reviews good or bad. So firstly I’m glad you’ve got that off your chest and I genuinely appreciate all feedback as there is always room for improvement. Before I comment on the actual review you have said you are a previous developer at Prodo and as we haven’t had a developer leave for over a year, I am sure that many of the things you have highlighted if you were still employed now during the Pandemic you may have changed your mind about. So I’m going to start by breaking down the headline one at a time. Money-grabbing - its difficult to qualify this bit with a response as it’s such a subjective thing - I take it from the tone that you mean the CEO (me) is personally money-grabbing. I think those who work, live with or know me well are clear that I am not money motivated, that isn’t what gets me out of bed and isn’t what made or want to grow a business over the last 21 years. I am though unashamedly focused on Prodo’s Profit & Loss and that is the role of the CEO to make sure that the future of Prodo is always safe regardless of trading conditions. No growth, no support, no training - again that’s a difficult one to answer, as we have put it in the hands of the teams themselves to identify with their manager together, what they need to grow, whether that is part of the weekly Level10 EOS meetings identifying issues or during your quarterly conversationals (1-2-1) and honestly I can say hand on heart that I don’t think I’ve ever turned down a request for someone who wants to learn more, including many overseas trips to the USA for Microsoft, Hubspot and Brand Development conferences. And poor company organisation, if you have been at Prodo in the last 3 years, you will have been involved in the role out of the Entrepreneurial Operating System - which is a framework for organising the business. It takes time, it’s involved lots of change to get us in the right shape, but I think now more than ever we have a structured company organisation and one that we have clearly documented and follow. To tackle the other things mentioned:- No support for employees, this is the one that concerns me the most, because one of our core values is ‘Genuinely Care’ and that goes to the heart of the business, we live by this. Having been the CEO during the last recession and coming into this current global pandemic I can honestly say that the primary concern I have had is the teams safety, job security and mental wellbeing. We have focused every week on these three items in our leadership meetings and have rolled out Mental Health First Aid training to all the leadership team and have an additional 6 qualified mental health first aiders. We did this because we care, not because it will bring us more money or make us look good but because we recognise now more than ever people are scared for their futures and the health of their friends and family. Salaries - this one is under a watchful eye, we pay a cost of living rise to everyone in the organisation every year and everyone gets an annual performance review. There are always fluctuations in the market around salaries and in any organisation if you were to look outside you could potentially find more money - but I believe our overall package is in line with market rates and we also look after the team in a far wider context than the salary too. Marketing focused rather than developer focused, I read the review last night after I’d spent the day in a workshop with senior developers talking about innovations on some of our key products. I am not ashamed that we are lead by what our market and what our customer's want and disagree that we don't’ involve our development teams in solutions development. All of that said - you feel really strongly that you didn’t have a good experience with us and that is sad, hopefully you gained career developing skills and as you said the team are a lovely bunch so possibly made some good friends. I’m always open and encouraging of a good honest dialogue about anything that will help us build a stronger business - so please feel free to reach out directly.