Vantaggi
If you want to join a digital circus, this is the place for you. On a good day working at Reading Room is great. On a bad day the office feels like a graveyard: the music system is broken, the guy you sit next to has mysteriously disappeared, and no one knows what's happened to him. Management just act as if nothing has happened...the demoralising gossip starts. It's one extreme or the other. There is nothing in between. If you can hack it, and survive the first few weeks (many don't...they pride themselves in hiring carefully, but one in two new recruits won't pass probation), Reading Room is a great place to learn. And you will learn a lot, in a short space of time. Be asked to do jobs that you aren't qualified to do, which at least, if you can pull it off, means your CV looks great when you come out the other end. There's high reward if you do well and impress the right people. Their recruitment model is largely based on hiring (cheaper) juniors to do a senior job, and this can work out well if you take the opportunity. However...most people wise up to how it works pretty quickly (which isn't difficult with the level of disillusionment permanently amongst the ranks and the amount of beer consumed), get what they need, and then get out before two years (and the much longer notice period) kicks in. Somehow, and despite its many faults, Reading Room have a knack of getting great people to work for them. It's no surprise that the theme that rings loudest in every leaving speech (and there are usually one or two of these a week) is "it's the people which make Reading Room great". There are some incredibly talented people there. You will do great work. I certainly don't regret joining the company, and I feel I left at the right time. Unfortunately, because of the way the company operates and treats its employees, that 'right time' is often within months rather than years, so that it feels like there's a mass exodus on the cards every month, and to combat this the management just pumps five or six new and uncalculated hires into the mix and hopes for the best. So Reading Room isn't for everyone. I suppose it depends if you think the beer fridge, the occasional great project, games, Nintendo, and the yearly 'stag do' to Paris every Xmas outweighs a list of cons longer than the list of ex Reading Room employees who join, but can't put up with the carnival longer than they have to.
Svantaggi
Revolving door recruitment policy is bad for morale. No communication from management about anything. People are just sacked, and never spoken of again. A lot of the senior management team aren't natural leaders. Why this is I don't know. Perhaps they were promoted too early and in a time when there was no one else to do it. The CEO is a genius, undoubtedly. But she's not for everybody. One person doesn't constitute a HR department. The pay and progression structure is shady and unclear. They have added another tier to management in London, and I hope that the new MD (who I think does possess the right leadership qualities) is able to make a dent in the ancient processes and systems which they claim are fluid, but are frozen and rigid like the look in the eyes of the management when targets aren't met, and another great client slips away because the wonderful team they were sold only ever existed on paper.