Checkout.com

Challenging tech stack. Good place to learn new things. A lot of unrelated work.

Chaotic at times, long hours, stressful, mismanaged.

The direction Checkout is taking is sinister. They started up as a fun start-up, but now they're a soulless corporation that invests a lot in people governance and policing, and they are dismantling anything that used to be worth staying for.

They have published a new NDA that no one wants to touch, so they employ dishonest tactics to twist people's arms to sign it. New starters will no doubt won't have a choice, but I ask new starters to carefully read it and decide if it's worth starting a job there with that eternal binding agreement over their heads.

They ask new starters, who have been in the company for less than one week, to come here and place 5-star reviews before they've even finished their first week inductions. I wouldn't trust any review in here based on how I see them push for people to come and write something positive.

They also started enforcing very strict rules about work, banning remote work and becoming more ruthless about it. They are also unable to make any exceptions, no matter how sensible your circumstances.

The HR department is run by bots, and I can confidently call them that because they failed the Turing test. They are unable to understand the content of your email and send out automated replies, often with irrelevant legal text. I hope no one will ever need their mercy for anything, because they won't find it. Those bots are incapable of any sympathy or emotion.

They also employ people to monitor emails and Slack conversations.

Hard work is not rewarded. I regret working long hours, weekends, and nights. I regret winning a hackathon, which meant 3 days and 3 nights of hard voluntary work. The award was a ten-pound ebook voucher from Amazon, and we never got to see the award because they suddenly fired the delivery manager who was supposed to send it.

Speaking of that, they often change their minds and fire lots of people in one go. While I was there, they fired all of the delivery managers and a lot of QAs with very short notice.

I can sense they're in a panic, as they grew too fast and are struggling to adjust.

My personal prediction is that Checkout is not going to last because I have seen the direction it is taking. Towards the end, it truly became insufferable, and I saw dozens of the best people go.

I feel because it is getting large and they have large clients, they want to go public. That means they have to make changes that inevitably cause them to lose all their best people.

I also know dozens of people who will soon depart. It is truly sad to see what it has become, but I am also happy to remember the good old days and how awesome it used to be a few years ago.

I will try to remember Checkout as it used to be and to only keep the memory of its heyday in my mind.