A Sinking Ship - Recensione dipendente - Associate presso Next Jump

Difficult to know where to start. It’s an incredibly toxic environment - largely attributable to the CEOs and their surrounding ‘leadership’ team - which makes it almost unbearable to work at Next Jump. Because the leadership is so bad, retention follows (50% of the company have left within a year, which is incredible within context of a bad job market during a global pandemic, and speaks to the extent of poor morale/sheer number of people pushed to breaking point - some leaving without new roles to go to). Whilst in the last year the workforce has halved, in the meantime workload has doubled due to creation of a ton of new, random (usually pointless) projects with arbitrarily urgent deadlines. This means for the remaining staff, each person has an unrealistic - bordering on irresponsible - workload, picking up all the work of their departed colleagues as well as an array of new projects. It’s normal to work 14-16 hour days, and weekend work is often required just to stay afloat. Although high workload is in some respects normal for high growth companies, Next Jump’s growth has been stagnant for years, which further demonstrates just how pointless all these extra projects are. All your hard work goes towards nothing, as these ‘next-big-thing, so-urgent-they-need-to-have-been-completed-yesterday’ projects are usually scrapped and forgotten about within a month or so, in favour of the new ‘next big thing’...and so the cycle continues. All of this will be required of you with no thanks or recognition (let alone compensation to reflect your work - there’s currently an indefinite freeze on pay increases, and, although the starting salary is good, in majority of cases you’ll find yourself falling significantly adrift of the market within a year or two). All you’ll get in return is a constant barrage of criticism that you’re still not doing enough, and that - despite all the hours and effort you’re putting in - you clearly just don’t care enough. It’s hard to imagine anything more demoralizing. This frequently impacts the mental health of employees (it’s rare to go a day or two without witnessing an emotional breakdown of a colleague) - however, the CEOs actively discourage any employees from seeking professional health, openly disparaging this type of support and creating an environment where employees feel too ashamed to seek any help. This is especially irresponsible in light of the fact that Next Jump has a policy of hiring only recent grads. This came about because grads tend to stick around longer, as they will tolerate more bad treatment than employees who have experience elsewhere (any lateral hires made in the past quickly realize that this is not a normal way to feel or be treated at work and leave). Another consequence of only employing people with no experience is just that - no one has any experience. Because of this, technical growth is non-existent. There’s an absolute cap to what you can learn at Next Jump to meaningfully advance your career, usually reached within a year or two. One of the worst things about working at Next Jump is having to advertize products and practices to other companies aimed at growth/retention of staff. It’s difficult to justify teaching this to other corporations when Next Jump’s own record on this is so poor. It is a big elephant in the room. The anonymous feedback app has been totally undermined by the CEOs unlocking bad feedback given to them (on the back of insensitive emails sent from the CEOs about BLM) and threatening action against anyone leaving them feedback they don’t like. You can probably infer how much honest feedback has been given to leadership since... If treatment of staff wasn’t bad enough already, a new system has been put in place labelling all employees as ‘basic’ and ‘premium’ employees. Your label dictates how you’ll be treated across a number of areas, from being permitted office access, to benefits, to vacation allowance, to how easily you can be fired. Of course, Next Jump allows itself to treat ‘basic’ employees just as the label sounds - giving them the bare minimum...and 90% of employees have been bucketed as ‘basic’ so far. There’s no structure to being selected as a ‘premium’ employee, just having to jump through a number of undignified, ever-changing, arbitrary hoops in order to win the approval of management, such as presenting to the full company on how ‘manipulative’ you are. All of this against a backdrop of 4 mandatory weekly meetings where the CEOs will rant for 2 hours about how great they are, but how useless all of their employees are (and how they could run the business with just 4 people, so they don’t care if you quit - a direct quote from an all company meeting). The best way to describe 8+ hours a week of this is that it’s as emotionally draining as it is inconvenient in light of your workload. They genuinely believe they don’t need any staff to run the business, and this arrogant belief translates to everything from how badly staff are treated, to how much your work is valued, to a bizarre lack of emphasis on hiring, to totally ignoring the clear retention issue. There is also a total and blanket refusal to address any problems that staff raise - all the above and much more has been frequently and respectfully shared with senior leadership in an attempt to get the company back onto a better course, but nothing ever changes. For the CEOs, the idea that their leadership is anything less than infallible simply doesn’t compute (they openly say they are perfect, and compare themselves and their teachings to Jesus - yes, really). Therefore, anyone who raises a complaint, or even a difference of opinion, is labelled and ostracized until they either leave or are forced out. Whilst the CEOs inflict all of the above and more on staff, the senior team around them don’t flinch (either they don’t see an issue or are too scared to argue - neither reflect well on their character). Increasingly, Next Jump is being run like a dictatorship where (they’re even bringing in a mandatory uniform for anyone coming into the office). Ask yourself if you’d like to live under a dictatorship. No? Then you certainly wouldn’t want to work under one either. People are leaving in their droves for a reason...