Pros
- Flexibility with working from home, 3 days in office, 2 days at home. - Often breakfast / lunch is provided during special occasions
Cons
When I first started working at Softcat everything seemed amazing. Great company, good location however my expectations were not met and the picture they had painted for me on my induction didn’t relate to what my day to day would be like. Below you'll find all the cons which I had experienced working for Softcat: - Drinking culture: team night outs are centred around drinking, pubs are booked out for lunches and theres a beer fridge on Fridays. To some this might be a positive, but if you don't drink for personal, religious or any other reason, this can be quite isolating and can prevent you from getting to know your colleagues in an informal setting. - Passive aggressive management that show obvious favouritism. This causes other colleagues to throw others under the bus in an attempt to make themselves look better. - Politics (internal and external) prepare to be surrounded by tories, the older generation seem to believe everything put out by the Daily Mail.. Drama between different departments, thinking one works harder than the next etc. - The pay does not reflect the amount of work and hours you’re expected to put in. Very basic salary and not competitive. If you work within sales you might not see this as a huge issue due to commission however this is why loads of people from the Business operations department transition to a sales role or choose to leave the company all together. - The toxic work culture made me live for the weekends instead of just enjoying everyday. - Very clique work environment within teams and it can be very isolating and off putting coming into work. - Management / team leaders don’t seem to have any passion for the job. All I see from them is stress and annoyance at others below them in rank and fear from those above them. - An uncomfortable amount of brown-nosing. - Management / team leaders only ever pop up for a chat when you’ve done something wrong however if you do something right it’s rarely recognised or praised. - Training is given by other staff members who have been at Softcat less than a year, due to management not prioritising training for new starts and technically ‘throwing them in the deep end’. If you make mistakes you're ridiculed by them with passive aggressive meetings/emails rather than them considering it may be at their fault due to not enough training being provided from the start. So you're essentially going to be learning from your mistakes rather than being taught how to do things right the first time. - It’s funny that a company that boasts about how it champions diversity doesn’t seem to have much, and if they do it’s mainly for entry level roles. If senior management don’t think they have a diversity issue, take a walk around the business operation floor in Marlow and count how many POC they see as opposed to how many white people there are, and no Graeme Watt, when I’m talking about diversity I’m not talking about the male to female ratio. - Nepotism is rife to the point it’s somewhat unprofessional as the senior management employ their children doing the simplest of tasks and they are given the most praise and are never required to make an effort to ‘get to know the team’ or integrate as anyone else would. - The diversity training is laughable considering it’s spearheaded by two white women who haven’t experienced the adversity they are talking about. To sum up the training it’s a glorified PSHE lesson, a 2 hour meeting with PowerPoint slides and half the people doing the training aren't even engaged in the conversations and only doing it because its mandatory. - Micromanagement from fellow colleagues. - Promotions / recognition is routinely given to the same people. Usually white, have a loud office presence and pally pally with management. - Management love it when people ‘just get on with it’ but if you’re struggling and need help you’re made to feel like a burden. - Pointless team meetings which could have been emails and leave you catching up on your work. - Senior managers who’ve been here since the company’s inception need to be replaced. They are the ones who seem to be the least professional when it comes to office topics/politics and if anything they don’t seem to be bringing anything ‘fresh’ to their roles. - In Softcat if you don’t have juicy gossip to share you’re labeled as boring. Managers / team leaders also get involved in the ‘banter’ of making fun out of other teams / individuals almost as a form of 'bonding' when they should be the ones to diffuse the situation. If anything they add fuel to the fire by participating in it. All in all, if you're looking to apply to Softcat, try and go for a Sales role as the company caters to them the most.
