Honest review: Working at Deriv had both genuinely positive aspects and very disappointing ones. - Recensione dipendente - Senior Portuguese Translator presso Deriv.com

However, there were also significant downsides. The appraisal process was exhausting, happening multiple times throughout the year, and the final evaluations often did not reflect people’s actual contributions or performance. Things changed noticeably when the company started facing more financial pressure. Leadership became heavily focused on AI and on finding ways to reduce headcount at minimal cost. That’s when the whole “C players” narrative started appearing more frequently. One phrase repeated constantly at the beginning of the AI push was: “AI will not replace you, but people using AI will.” In reality, that was not entirely true. I was nowhere near a “C player.” I was promoted with a message from my VP saying they needed more people like me. From the moment I joined the team, I optimized processes, automated repetitive tasks, created glossaries, built an agent, and helped the AI engineering team improve machine translation quality. Did far more that what my role required. In the end, the very tools I built and helped build made my role “redundant.” I understand that layoffs and restructuring are part of the lifecycle of many companies, and I accept that. What I do not accept is the way things were handled, I deserved better.