Pros
The development team (devs, product and IT) are passionate about making the product better and their heart is in the right place. The product has lots of potential given the HR space it is placed in. There are some industry trends, that if managed correctly, could put the product ahead of its major (and much larger) competitors. 7-hour workdays are nice, that 30 minutes really makes a difference (especially when being remote).
Cons
Senior leadership is still stuck in the old-school mentality of seeking short-term sales over longer, more strategic developments. This comes at a major detriment to the development team and the product overall, adding to the already-high levels of technical debt. There were a lot of occasions where vapourware was sold without even consulting the development team, with pressure then put to to the team to build the said feature(s) as fast as possible. A recipe for disaster in my eyes. Micromanagement from the MD (ex technical director in a previous capacity) is also rife, triggering an unhealthy relationship with the development team. I can’t think of a single week where there wasn’t some criticism around minutiae that should really have been left to the development team to decide. The MD needs to hang up his technical boots and trust the team to actually build something modern, scalable, secure and performant without trying to be the one in control of the decisions. I note a time when I lost all trust in the MD after he failed to align with his own company values. I can’t put the details on here, but let’s just say the integrity was well and truly blown and I started looking for jobs elsewhere as a result. Employee attrition is very high, which is surprising given the space Rippl operate in. This makes it very hard to sustain any level of stability across the business. New people with new (often better) ideas are gone a few months later, then processes changed again as a result.