Checkout.com

• Checkout threw money at tech, which means we worked with great tooling as there seemed to be no upper limit on spending.
• Some extremely smart people were working in the company.

I can honestly say that checkout massively impacted my mental health in a negative way. There was a constant sense of frustration and tension across every team I spoke to.

Managers didn't want to be managers in many cases, and very much so on my team. This meant that trying to progress was impossible, and there was no feedback after the last review I had before I left, even.

The culture champs network was ineffectual and actually shut down on a global scale with "small targeted" teams of people at a local level, but literally nothing ever came of any meeting we ever had.

There was a glass ceiling which was very apparent. Some of the more senior engineers in management were very obviously disdainful of teams they didn't see as "useful".

Pretty terrible compensation on the whole. A fairly low base, which is compounded by salary brackets moving 3 times in the space of 1.5 years.

Terrible diversity.

Eighty percent of my working days were filled with stress and general team unhappiness. I actively dreaded going to work on Monday mornings, and I know I'm not the only one who felt like this, given the massive amount of people leaving at the same time as me.

I tried to help make a better checkout while I was there, but no one really cared. I don't think most of the management team would care about my experience, so I find it difficult to suggest solutions. I think a lot of management needs proper training around actually managing people.