Think twice about Babylon - Director Babylon Employee Review

1.0
Mar 20, 2020
Recommend
CEO approval
Business outlook

Pros

Digital health as a sector has promise

Cons

Babylon has a toxic culture, product issues and relies heavily on Saudi money. I decided to write this review to help job candidates make an informed decision. Unfortunately, Babylon is a highly dysfunctional workplace with a toxic culture. I think there are some decent and competent professionals in the ranks but they are not the ones in charge. Instead, most senior leaders are based in London and have little to no US healthcare experience. I'm also concerned that the company has been more technology-driven than healthcare-driven. What’s worse, they’re not even getting the technology part right. I witnessed a number of examples where physicians and other healthcare professionals were treated with little regard. An external facing example of this made headlines when Babylon openly criticized a physician who pointed out safety concerns with its flagship chatbot product. The physician called out Babylon for having a culture that “trys to silence criticism” rather than engage with genuine clinician concerns. I believe the company will be very challenged to grow into its record $2Bn post money valuation from its last capital raise led by Saudi Arabia's Public Investment Fund (PIF). From a US perspective, I'm not a fan of the Saudis involved in the US healthcare system where data privacy is paramount. Frankly, if you're interested in US digital health, there are other more reputable US-based companies that aren't compromised by poor UK-based management, Saudi money and a shoddy product. Plus the pay and benefits are way below market.

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Babylon Response
6y
Thank you for your review. Over the past two months, Babylon has carried out the vital process of reviewing our engineering platform, technology tribe structure and general capabilities to ensure the product is more scalable and to support long-term global delivery. The COVID-19 crisis has obviously also had a huge impact on both our clients’ needs and delivery requirements, and we have had to review our structures to reflect our short-term delivery needs. This work resulted in around 5% of our workforce being furloughed in the UK as they were not critical to current delivery while others have left the business as they fell outside of the scope of our renewed longer-term focus. During those same two months, we have seen a resultant upturn in the number of negative reviews, with March and April now representing nearly 50% of the total reviews Babylon has received in its six years history on Glassdoor. Within Babylon we have a strong safety culture across our engineering, product and clinical operations teams, and closely monitor all aspects of safety, so that we comply with best practice in all areas. We don’t just rely on our internal processes; we are audited, inspected and reported on by numerous external bodies, and we score highly, i.e. the recent report by the CQC in which we were rated outstanding for being well-led. None of our products get released without passing safety testing, that is done every time, whether it be for the release of a brand-new product or a minor feature change. Safety approval is required for all changes in the live product. At Babylon, we really value our open and collaborative culture and carry out a survey among our two thousand employees every two weeks anonymously using an independent platform, collecting thousands of data points to assess the true feelings of Babylonian across many different subjects. Our survey shows when asked, ‘I’m inspired by the purpose and mission of our organisation’, 89% scored 7 or more out of 10 and ‘How likely is it you would recommend Babylon as a place to work?’, 71% scored 7 or more out of 10.

Explore other reviews about Babylon

5.0
Jun 10, 2025
Recommend
CEO approval
Business outlook

Pros

great great great great great

Cons

Dont have any cons, all great

2.0
May 27, 2026
Recommend
CEO approval
Business outlook

Pros

I had the chance to work with some of the most brilliant individuals and it was a great learning experience in a fast paced growth environment

Cons

CEO/COO had a completely different concept of what this company's identity was from what we were actually doing.

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