Fluidly Reviews

Pros

I've been working at Fluidly as a Senior Software Engineer and Tech Lead for 9 months. The CEO/CTO have created an energetic, productive culture in engineering where people are responsible for delivering business goals instead of just code/features We have a very lean approach to software development and are always looking to reduce waste, the amount of which always annoyed me at other companies We don't... have any staging environments - each merged PR goes straight to production. This has actually increased stability by putting the onus of responsibility directly onto individual developers to practice TDD, pair programming, good architectural practices and have high coding standards (14 engineers typically release 40 times a day) The team is nice, smart and friendly - not only do most of us eat lunch together every day, but we are often social outside of work, be it going to the pub, karaoke, or playing board games. I enjoy working with everyone on the team We try to maintain a blame-free culture at all times, so that when mistakes are made we own them and deal with them as a team

Cons

In many ways Fluidly is still early stage, but growing fast and this means change is the only constant. It can sometimes be difficult to adjust to the chaos of constantly shifting priorities We've had to scale out the architecture very quickly, so things are messy and many details are in various people's heads. We'll need good people to work hard at making sure this doesn't slow us down as we grow Everyone is... expected to deliver and there is no absence of pressure to do so (not so negative for me, but some may not like such high expectations) Because this is a new product in a new space (intelligent cashflow) the product team are in uncharted waters and are still figuring out their approach, which means engineering has to work closely with them to define everything. No spoon feeding of requirements here!

Advice to Management

Let the engineering team's culture of maximizing learning from failure permeate through the company. We will need to experiment and fail many times before we become successful, and if we can fail safely and learn from every instance, Fluidly will be a great product/company!

Pros

Great culture with a kind do attitude, rapidly growing, great perks and fabulous office in a great location

Cons

The start up culture is not for everyone, people need to be prepared to have an open minded, flexible and agile

Advice to Management

Keep communicating, keep reviewing processes and carry on being proactive and thoughtful

Pros

Well funded, experienced leadership. Product solves a real pain point for businesses and has a real chance of winning their segment in the market. Positive team culture. The engineering teams are relatively self-organising and progressive. Lots of opportunity to make a real difference in the product + success of the company. They've also been super supportive of my needs as single parent giving me flexible... hours, legal support and remote work.

Cons

It's a startup in a new market so there is a lot to do and not enough time to do it, the roadmap changes month by month. That said the team are getting better at experimenting to help refine different aspects of the roadmap.

Advice to Management

You're awesome ... keep doing what you're doing. Don't try and do everything - stick with your USP.

Pros

- Amazing CEO. - They have a great shot of becoming huge. Get in now while it's relatively early. - A lot of new things to build.

Cons

- Usual startup stress. They do a good job of mitigating the inevitable chaos of a company growing that fast, but it is obviously not as predictable as some might like.

Advice to Management

Keep it up!

Pros

Fluidly is a great place to work. - Being a young startup, we have great problems and challenges to solve - We have a team of highly talented people keen to do whatever it takes to make us successful - We do not work crazy hours. Life/Work balance is respected - The leadership team is inspiring and forward thinking - The product is unique in its category and solves business owners issues. It's an interesting... market. - Everyone has a voice and listen. - Lots of socials and sharing - Multi nationality

Cons

An ongoing improvement on offices. They are well located (Holborn) but they need some new furnitures and wall space ! Need a bit more diversity in engineering team but a lot of effort is made when recruiting.

Advice to Management

Continue to inspire people and manage scaling well.

Pros

- Very friendly and clever people - Nice stack, which becomes more mature - From time to time possibility to wfh - Training budget - Open minded

Cons

- The bigger picture is not fully defined yet, so sometimes you will have to switch between tasks quickly, but afaik it's normal for fast pace environment

Pros

Lots of autonomy as long as work is getting done. Good budget for professional development. High calibre of staff. Remote working is possible for short stints. Some of the usual stuff - Friday drinks, casual dress, your choice of hardware to work on, etc. Fun tech stack :) Good product vision and leadership.

Cons

Office is a bit bleak - while the people are lovely, the space needs more atmosphere. Location is good but would be better to go to East London if the company really wants to be seen as a fintech player. No decent t-shirts/hoodies/other gear, or other start-up culture accoutrements. Salaries are competitive with other startups but not with Google/Facebook/Amazon/etc.

Advice to Management

Keep up the good work - and embrace start-up culture if that's the world that you want to be in.

Pros

Amazing roadmap, really interesting large scale challenges, with fast growth and massive data sets make for a really interesting place to work. Team are all bright, friendly and focus is on collaborative achievements not individuals so keeps engineering quality high.

Cons

Sometimes too customer driven, which takes time away from main goals. High pressure, especially when focus is scattered onto too many projects, however recent management changes have made engineering and product a lot more focused. Some early engineering decisions like using FlowJs instead of TypeScript are a bit of pain but they are taking note and learning from mistakes.

Advice to Management

Stay focused on medium and long terms goals and try not to be pulled off course by client requests.