Checkout.com

• Good salary, they also offer a generous bonus at the end of the year, which is rare in this industry.
• Tech stack is very interesting - you're gonna learn a lot of infrastructure as well as AI and data engineering if end up in a good team.
• People are very smart and in general very motivated. If you enjoy building cool stuff this is the place to go.

• No flexibility in their hybrid policy: If you join Checkout you must come 3 days per week in the office (there are some exceptions i.e. if you are sick, extraordinary causes etc). I really feel this policy hurts more than helps, most of the talent are going to competitors precisely for this reason, and for work/life balance this is pretty bad
• Mandatory out-of-hours on call. It is quite generous (50% of your hourly salary), however if you are in a team with a lot of incidents (i.e. core teams) get yourself prepare. If you get an offer make sure it's not a critical team to avoid this.
• Perks are not really perks: it comes as a deduction from your salary. For example private health insurance - you need to sacrify ~100£/month to get this "perk" as well as others, which I found this a bit ridiculous.
• The free lunches are terrible. Sorry but it is the true - I would suggest management to radically change the free lunches approach and either offer vouchers to employees or a self-service catering like other tech companies do

Consider improving the cons I mentioned above. These are regular issues highlighted in Peakon and it's never addressed, and I've seen many people leaving because of this unsustainable environment.

If Checkout wants to really thrive and have a great culture to attract talent, it NEEDS to start with work/life balance. Otherwise Checkout will never compete with Adyen or Stripe