Avantages
Innovative start-up environment, interesting Crypto projects, friendly, nice and intelligent colleagues.
Inconvénients
Quant seems to be a typical Start-up, with a fast paced environment and an innovative product in the emerging cryptocurrency world. During my time at Quant (1 year), quite a few changes occurred, be it teams changing members, teams ceasing to exist, changes in product direction and vision, projects pausing and or changing drastically, people being shared between multiple teams. Although change is welcome in Agile and expected to see within a start-up environment that evolves dynamically, I felt that executing the changes was not thought through thoroughly, and that the impact of some of these changes to people was not considered much. In my experience at Quant, when things went well, everyone was happy and no one was in trouble. When things didn’t go to plan, elements of blame started to appear, and the focus was on individuals rather than at team level as well as on providing individuals with the support the need. The management promoted the idea of the responsibility sitting mainly with individuals, rather than with teams where opportunities for improvement and support are explored. As an Agile expert, I was the leader for quite a few teams myself (up to five at some point), and because of management being unhappy with a particular area, I was removed from a team and informed via Slack about it. I was after a while made redundant because of not having experience at a particular aspect of the work; my proposal to get training and support, so I can improve, was rejected. I was then asked to go on garden leave till my last day of employment, which happened with other people within the company as well, after an agreement to leave was made. A former employee’s access to everything was revoked immediately, when they announced their resignation, and after the company discovered that they will be joining a competitor company. This lady, because of this, didn’t get the chance to say goodbye to people, and I saw her coming to collect her belongings, after a meeting with management, in tears. In my case, as well as in other cases, no leaving due was arranged, nor a card was given as a sign of appreciation towards people working at and contributing to the company. To me, it felt like individuals were not trusted, and were unfortunately perceived as threats and unimportant, as soon as they didn’t seemed useful anymore.