Monzo

Strong hustle culture. There is a constant push to ship faster and faster, followed by predictable incidents and then the usual post-incident “safety first” messaging. Everyone knows it doesn’t mean much, because by the next sprint it is back to speed above all else.

A small number of teams offer genuinely interesting mobile work. For many others, it is mostly fairly uninspiring backend-driven UI, so plenty of mobile engineers end up learning backend work instead.

This varies by team, but mine was extremely cliquey. Technical ability only gets you so far; to progress, it matters more to be liked by influential people and to loudly celebrate every little thing one's team produces, even when it's fairly unremarkable.

It is common for people to be hired below their true level, and promotions were very difficult to secure. I saw plenty of engineers promoted only after operating at that level for many years already.

The manager was not competent in core aspects of management: vague communication, poor leadership outcomes, quick to assign blame rather than improve, prone to delegating managerial responsibility under the banner of “autonomy”, and tended to place greater weight on feedback from more senior stakeholders who only observed work at a distance over that of those working closely day to day. His micromanagement style was well received by senior leadership.