1E Reviews

1E has the worst, most clueless management team I have ever met and a total absence of direction. Foremost among these incompetents is the CEO, a runaway ego well past his sell-by date who rages like a despotic toddler and spreads the seeds of failure over any half decent ideas that emerge. Joining 1E is not quite career suicide, but it’s hardly a good move. And frankly, the moment you put 1E on your LinkedIn profile, recruiters will start circling your head like greedy carrion because they KNOW. Really, unless your idea of a good career move is fantasising about your exit interview before you’ve even passed probation then MOVE ALONG. I know what you’re thinking. You are a seasoned professional who’s seen it all. A man or woman of substance. Surely it can’t be that bad? Yes. Yes, it can. Imagine you take a role in marketing. None of 1E's senior team really understands what marketing is about, neither do they care. In consequence, you will spend your (brief, brief) time there banging against a brick wall of ignorance. Unfortunately for you, they also have egos the size of Colossus, and fancy themselves thought leaders. So, you will be presented with ideas so preposterous only a donkey would consider them worthy of a marketing campaign – and be expected to turn them into industry-leading stuff. You will be asked to present three year-old “strategic” ideas as though they are the latest innovation. At one point during this madness you will come back from lunch to discover half the people on your team have mysteriously disappeared, possibly murdered by Orcs, and the HR team is pretending they never existed. The upside to all of this, of course, is that you develop fantastic relationships with the people around you. 1E has an uncanny knack of hiring tremendous people. Which is great because it means that when you are all huddling in those muddy trenches like Blackadder & Co., waiting for your turn to go over the top, you can have great conversations and forge deep friendships based on a shared experience of being belittled and undermined by morons on a daily basis. 1E is blind. Blind to the market around it and above all blind to its own faults and shortcomings. Try asking any of the senior team about how sustainable a business dependent on software licences is now that so many are moving to subscription models (they will blush and mumble nonsense). Try sitting through any meeting involving financial projections without erupting into scales of laughter. I dare you. 1E's HR team likes to post repetitive potted replies to posts like this one, featuring loaded comments about bitter/disgruntled/discarded/underperforming employees. However, if you cast your eye over the CV or LinkedIn profile of any ex-1E victim, you will be struck by how swiftly they move on to more senior roles at prestigious companies. I, for example, did such a bad job at 1E that I was handed a director-level role by my next employer.

Leadership - The company is still majority owned by its co-founder, who fills the CEO, CTO, and at times CMO roles. He is therefore effectively a dictator, able to make decisions on a whim, without any consultation. The company has grown far beyond the guy who helped develop the idea for the first piece of 1E software, and he is woefully out of his depth leading a medium sized company. Other senior roles (COO, President North America, President India) are filled by similarly under-qualified and incapable friends and family, with the remaining C-Suite roles being taken up by short-lived individuals who soon fall foul of the CEO's constant arbitrary changes in strategic direction. The CEO makes regular changes to the company strategy - major rewrites, not tweaks - resulting in vast amounts of wasted work, and a workforce demoralised and unsure of messaging and direction. One major branding overhaul was instigated by his 15-year old son. No joke. Two former C-Suites confided to me that the Board has regularly begged the CEO to step aside and hire a professional CEO to lead the company, but he has refused to do so. The situation is so ridiculous that the standard job description actually says "candidates must be able to handle ambiguity, it is a fact of life at 1E". Again, no joke. Attrition - In the final year of my employment at 1E, there were around 80 documented exits from 1E (i.e. company emails sent out saying they had left). This is documented fact. Many other staff left quietly out the back door. Given that the global headcount hovers just below 200 total, this is mind-blowing. I head first-hand from several recruiters that they've never seen anything like it. Salary - The company talks internally about competitive salary, but there is no evidence of it. There may be a particular department in which staff are well remunerated, but overall people tend to achieve massive pay jumps when leaving to take up similar roles at other companies. Whilst at the company one's pay is unlikely to increase; most years there were no raises above inflation. Culture and HR - The company culture is toxic. Staff live in constant fear of being made redundant or fired, and relations between the senior execs and the rest of the company are non-existent. Criticism is not tolerated, and staff who attempt to speak up are shown the door that day. Unhappiness amongst staff is not seen as a company issue, rather it is taken as a personal insult by the CEO and COO, who will seek to engage the unhappy parties under the guise of dialogue, before firing them. Several of the monthly company updates begin with a speech about how "unsavoury" elements, who weren't "part of the team" or "pulling in the right direction" have been removed from 1E. The HR team is the very worst combination of being complete toadies to the Executive, and thoroughly incompetent at their roles. Laughably embarrassing mistakes litter their everyday work, and staff who make the mistake of holding "confidential" meetings with them to air grievances are soon handed their P45s. There is no real way to provide feedback up the chain. As part of annual reviews, staff can discuss their manager, but only to that same manager. If other issues are to be raised, they must be done so publicly, which given the regular witch-hunts has resulted in a culture of fear and silence. It is telling, that I cannot think of one former employee (and I am in regular touch with a great number - see 'Pros'), who has a good thing to say about the company. I have never known that anywhere else, it really is extraordinary. Cronyism and Discrimination - The treatment of women is awful - many complaints of sexual harassment, and other than the CEO's sister, (ex-)wife, and current partner/PA, no women are in senior roles at 1E. If you're the CEO's mate, you're golden. Ski trips, gifts, career advancement. If not, well, pray you fall into the 'unnoticed' camp rather than catching his eye. He tends to have firm favourites for a few weeks, who burn up and get shown the door when he gets bored. Several departments were replaced twice over in my time at the company. Product - A few years ago 1E was leading the pack with several of its products. Those days are long gone though, with only one of their stable being a top-end product. Constant firings in the engineering teams, and the almost weekly changes in direction by the CEO have seen 1E hand over its leading position to aggressive and innovative competitors. Growth - That the company is 19 years old and still describes itself in start-up terms, tells you everything you need to know about growth and culture.