Lab49 Reviews

Ah, the booming Death Knell of the Death March Project. I can only speak for London, where real talent, and more importantly, real dedication and commitment can be found amongst the troops on the ground. But in the world of company politics, the wrong people have won the war. The technical leadership are a joke, relying on confrontation to sustain them in their misassigned and misaligned roles. How long before these clowns are finally removed is anyone's guess. And delivery management (project management, to you and me) are simply disconnected from the people they need to, er, deliver. As alleged proponents of "Agile" software engineering, these guys can spend literally months "forward planning" - essentially, locked in a room, divining an order to a book of work that makes no logical sense to the engineers building it, and looking distinctly like a series of firmly frozen waterfalls. Fixed contracts don't need to be like this. I have never, ever, worked anywhere with such a high turnover of staff. During my time there, I saw almost 2 entire turnovers of the London engineering team. Seriously, can you find anything else like this on Glassdoor? This is not an environment where you will thrive. Ghastly - avoid at all costs. Save yourself.

The problem with reviews like this is that there is always a biased narrative, with this is mind - here's mine! There are many con's, the hardest part is picking a starting point.. Most of the reviews below say it all 'Beaten Dog Syndrome', 'Awful, just awful' being my current favourite. Lets start with Agile, this word will be thrown around like an empty tracksuit at lab49.. However, the true meaning of the word at Lab has manifested into something other than the common understanding. If your a true agile evangelist stay well away, this is not for you! The organisation has no concept of team driven development, more a state of powerpoint dictatorship - deck after deck of process change - none of it created with agility or the team in mind, more a sense of buzzwords or lingo bingo. Sprints fail constantly, with teams being driven to death during the final stages. Across the senior management level their is little or no agile experience as most of them have worked / trodden the same career path at Lab for many years. Over that past year Lab changed its operating model, it's clear to me that the best man for the job was pushed to one side, delivery does not belong under the ownership of technology - creates a moral issue and conflict of interest, especially if the new leaderships only insight into delivery comes from a few books listed on Amazon. As a global entity the organisation is shameful, due to the unique and exciting way senior management operate tension is high whilst trust is low. their is a hidden circle at Lab, if your in the click you will do well - outside your a number, a rather high one at that based on staff turnover. Due to this imbalance some of the best practices I have seen are overlooked, especially by the teams operating in the USA, again a missed opportunity to improve and learn. In respect to life-balance, I throw caution to anyone who is thinking about joining the ranks or currently employed by Lab. There is more to life than working evenings and long weekends, do what ever else it is that you enjoy, spend time with your family, go out, see your friends don't fall into a false sense of this is 'just the norm', it's not! No one will thank you for it, no one will monitor it other than pointing blame at project management for burning budget (the irony is hilarious). To sum, Lab is a fully functional fire station. The normal operating procedure leans towards constant fire-fighting with cascading processes designed to camouflage other bad processes. A true horror story... With hand on heart I can honestly say I have never seen an organisation struggle with change so much....