Pros
Great team to work with, Shout have a good culture in the office and each team has some great people to work with, it's easy to get on with everybody. Embraces new tech / not set in ways Good in-office culture
Cons
While the team are great the work is not, difficult clients and little to no protection from them. Commercial success is paramount and that leads to unrealistic expectations and deadlines that just get agreed to, this is at the expense of quality or work-life balance (for example have been asked to work overtime to finish a sprint but without pay because a client had forced 4 weeks of work into 2 and wasn't prepared to pay OT). You are often at the mercy of their bigger clients and Shout are perfectly happy to watch you struggle. On a particular project I have watched 7 members of staff (and then myself) leave, despite constantly receiving feedback and knowing the reasons, and I heard recently they have renewed this contract. Commercial pressure seems to give project managers a rough time and have seem them leaving quite often - without them as a barrier this then leads to pressure directly applied to the delivery team. There's little to no progression at Shout unless somebody above you in the hierarchy leaves. I asked frequently for a progression/feedback framework to be introduced only to finally receive a half baked implementation introduced, which also did not resolve any of the problems I had raised and seemed to have been a glorified copy & paste exercise from senior leadership to set everybody the same goals and had no bearing on the individual. All targets and goals I was set were clearly for the business' benefit and not for my own, Such as certifications for software I didn't use, but knew the business was trying to gain business partnership with. The concept of a salary review is at best enigmatic. Some staff we're told these happen in November company wide, some were told it was at the anniversary of your start date - after asking my line manager I was told they do not happen because they don't wish to upset anybody who doesn't deserve one by not awarding anything. The new goals framework they introduced did not outline or mention anything relating to this either. Company pushed for flexible workplace accreditations then immediately doubled back on themselves making hybrid working more strict. I raised that not much was done to include remote workers and was told that was by design as they want to discourage WFH as much as possible. Other compensations/perks/benefits apply mostly to on-site workers too.