Primer

2.0

Apr 6, 2022

Anonymous employee

Recommend

CEO approval

Business outlook

Pros

Really lovely team for the most part, and I do miss working with a lot of the people I met there. In theory unlimited holiday and other perks. I liked the product. It's fully remote.

Cons

Rewritten this a few times because I don’t want it to come across as overly harsh: Very long working hours. It was (and I'm sure still is) normal for people to work long hours there - I'd be working until 10/11pm at night regularly, plus at least a few hours on the weekend. This was totally normalised and expected. I was frequently asked by my line manager to work on the weekend. Did I receive emails from other members in the team past midnight on weekends? Yes. Do other people work weekends and late into the night? Yes. Were folk regularly on Slack at midnight? Yes. After communicating that I was struggling with my workload, the expectations and the hours, I was told to improve my time management and to ‘just operationalise everything’ without any more explanation. I couldn’t sustain working like this and ended up burning out badly - asking to take a month off work (as someone else in the team had done when citing burnout) was refused because ‘it’s a totally different situation as you don’t have kids’. Someone in the team had gone to my line manager expressing concern that I was burning out months earlier; when I resigned I was told this had been a mark against my name. I wish I'd taken the burnout warnings seriously because for the first time in my life I ended up on antidepressants and exhausted. The long hours combined with the often unfriendly and combative working environment can easily grind people down, especially if they are more sensitive or work in a creative field. I comforted 8 people who were either crying on video calls or considering resigning (some have since quit, some still work there). I also comforted people crying post interviews. A lot of these people were women. I don’t think this helps create an inclusive working environment. There’s a lack of structure which I think is due to this being the founder’s first company? There were no budgets set for anything, yet you’d be told things you wanted to do were out of budget, which was pretty maddening. I personally had no formal 1.1s or set expectations or feedback, unless I sought it out. It all made for a pretty confusing and chaotic place to work - which of course you expect to some extent with a start-up, but this really took it to an extreme.

Primer Response

Hi, Many thanks for taking the time to provide feedback on your time at Primer, it's invaluable for us to receive this kind of insight, including areas for potential improvement. It's great to hear that, overall, you got on well with the team and made close bonds with colleagues. As a business, we are very big advocates of a healthy work-life balance, so we offer our employees the greatest possible flexibility around how and when they work. We now have a dedicated page on our intranet called "Primer Wellbeing", dedicated to detailing how to achieve a comfortable work-life balance, alongside our employee benefits such as flexible working hours, unlimited holiday, access to mental wellbeing support and private medical cover. We also have a "trust by default" culture - that means we track results rather than hours and trust you to know what you need to do and the resources you require to do your job effectively. It's worth mentioning that receiving messages out of your perceived 'normal' working hours is quite common at Primer due to the global spread of employees - we have members of staff based across the US, Europe and Asia who will all be coming online at different times - however, there is never an expectation for you to come back to those messages outside of your chosen working hours unless for example you are on-call or there is an emergency. It seems that this was not communicated to you as well as it should have been during your time at Primer. Regarding the "lack of structure", it is possible as an early employee of Primer you experienced some of the expected growing pains that an early-stage startup goes through, especially during those first 12-18 months. We now have various policies documented to cover budgeting, communication styles, remote working life and more. Whilst we feel we have come a long way, we are constantly looking at ways to improve our employee experience - that includes new and innovative benefits, updated working policies, culture clubs and exciting diversity initiatives. We hope that if you did decide to join Primer again in future, your experience would be very different because of these developments. Thanks again for taking the time to leave a review with us, your feedback is greatly appreciated.

1.0

Jan 30, 2023

Sales

Recommend

CEO approval

Business outlook

Pros

This could have been a cool company. It's a smart product, thoguh not as innovative and unqiue as the founders think it is. Things that were advertised when I was hired like putting their people first, valuing differing opinions and new ideas, were a farce.

Cons

One of the Founders talks so condescendingly to his employees even publicly on slack that it’s alarming. Everyone is afraid to stand up to him so managers, and directors are all just yes men. Maybe the company wouldn’t be going down the tubes if they had listened to employees who were boots on the ground everyday and brought in more unique experiences than one entitled over-educated and pompous Frenchman. Micromanaging was EXCESSIVE at this company, if you don’t trust your employees, what are you doing?

Primer Response

Thank you for your review and for bringing these concerns to our attention. We are constantly striving to ensure that our employees are heard and valued at Primer, so it’s disappointing that you feel you have not had this experience. Innovation is at the heart of everything we do. We are constantly reviewing how we can gather feedback from Primigo’s and action their ideas, as well as ensuring that the well-being and needs of our employees are a top priority, past and present. Our co-founders, and all of us here at Primer, take how we communicate with each other very seriously. We're disappointed to hear your concerns and we have relayed your feedback. We are extremely grateful to you and all employees who played a part in current Primer's success and wish you all the best in your future endeavours. Thanks again for taking the time to leave a review with us, your feedback is greatly appreciated.

I wouldn't recommend it to a friend - Anonymous employee Primer Employee Review

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