Great Development Opportunities - Developer Hookson Employee Review

Nice office, central location in Edinburgh. They did win some prestigious pitches so they do have some interesting projects to work on. There is occasionally a dog in the office if you like animals.

The managing director ( who the firm is named after ) can be very difficult to work with due to his micro management style of interacting with the small team. It wasn't uncommon to be dressed down in front of colleagues several times a week which was humiliating and unnecessary. This made the working environment somewhat volatile and made the culture in the office stressful and on a knife edge. Hookson don't have the strategic wherewithal to implement digital projects successfully, which is a shame as they do win some interesting ones. They are a branding agency who are interested in profiting by rolling out as many websites or apps as they can in the shortest amount of time. Don't work there if you're interested in quality, they're all about quantity, so the onus is making something look good rather than something that is good. There is little work life balance as the managing director would contact you in the evenings and weekends about project statuses and updates.

I worked at Hookson for x years and have to call out the flexible working arrangements as a real plus. I was able to work in an agile way that helped my work life balance and didn’t hinder my development. Lovely bunch of people to work with.

Not a downside as such, the workload can be quite significant in busy periods but teamwork always seem to kick in at the right time!