Pros
- Workplace culture is my number one priority, and is what particularly attracted me to Annalise. It's a values-led company with nice collaborative colleagues, low ego, good team work, a lot of autonomy and trust in people, work/life balance, humanistic policies that treat employees as people. By far the best place I've ever worked. - Great quality product that solves a real problem, potential to do a lot of good in the world (save lives!), and is better than potential "competitor" products. - Great tech stack - Continuous commitment to improvement. In any job or company there are going to be times where there are problems or things that could be done better... the question is how are these things handled? At Annalise, across the whole company, in every role, there is a genuine desire to solve problems as they arise and improve on what has been done before, plus the openness and low-ego, low-hierarchy, low-bureaucracy to be able to speak up about these things without fear of blow-back. Feedback and ideas are welcome from anywhere. There are opportunities to provide feedback, implement ideas and solve problems - whether in your own work or working outside your role collaborating across the company. - Remote/Hybrid/In-office options and ability to work flexible hours. My team is all remote, which is great for me. - Good processes to support us to do great work and achieve our goals. We use Agile/Scrum pretty well, leadership takes a coaching approach to management, dedicated time & budget for personal/professional development, Culture Amp is used to set and track cultural goals , etc. (Admittedly, being a start-up we are also a 'work-in-progress', so there is room for improvement on our processes!). - Some advice I was given when on the job hunt was to take an "investor" mindset. If you were an investor, investing your money in a company, what would you look for? I admire and respect how Dimitry & Aengus Tran have gone about building this company, the attention to not only a quality innovative product, and a smart partnership-orientated entry to markets, but also in ensuring the company has good values and culture for the people who work in it. There is a lot of intelligence, wisdom, ethics and evidence-based approach underlying these decisions. I have a lot of confidence in the future success of our products and company, and think it is worth the investment.
Cons
- No ESOP at this stage, might be available in future - Right attitude and values, however, still working on the implementation. For example, diversity could be improved. At the moment the gender gap is standard for the tech industry (about 70% men to 30% women in the company, 80% men to 20% women in tech roles), the organisation wants to improve on this. - If you haven't worked in med-tech or similar before, the amount of "compliance" required to meet regulations is probably the most frustrating thing, a bit bureaucratic. However this is a small part of a software engineer's job, (and the overall company culture is NOT bureaucratic), and from what I understand Annalise's approach is less bureaucratic compared to other med-tech companies. - The structure of the company, as a joint venture between Harrison.AI and I-MED, is both a pro and a con. It has supported Annalise to succeed through the early start-up stage where so many other early-stage startups are at high risk of failure, however it can be a little confusing as there are people seconded from Harrison to work in Annalise temporarily, at times joint meetings/events, some policies, processes, etc have been inherited from I-MED, so Annalise is yet to grow fully into it's own. Sometimes talking about Annalise is synonymous with talking about Harrison, however Annalise is a child company so there are differences. Note to readers: If there is a sudden influx of people reviewing /rating Annalise - yes our People & Culture department did a shout out to encourage us. We're a small young startup so don't have a lot of presence on Glassdoor, (which we all use when trying to decide where to work!). However this doesn't mean there is any influence towards fake reviews/ratings. Reviews are all anonymous, Annalise don't know who posted what, so if I or anyone was unhappy working here I could write a negative review if that's how I felt. If unsure about the ratings, it's a good idea to reach out directly to past and present employees via LinkedIn to see what they have to say.