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Smart, kind people, encouraged to be both in pursuit of an inspiring mission

Software Engineer
Current Employee
Has worked at Monzo for 4 years
April 5, 2021
London, England
5.0
RecommendsPositive OutlookApproves of CEO
Pros

Monzo ticks a lot of boxes for me:

  • Broad and inspiring company mission ("make money work for everyone")
  • Challenging problems to solve
  • Exceptional people to solve them with
  • Fair pay and generous options
  • Excellent work/life balance

The biggest thing is the mission. There is so much potential for making money work better for people. And doing the hard work so things "just work" for customers is one of our core strengths. Now we're also moving towards profitability, I think we're in for a really exciting few years! I also really value the 1:1 culture. I love speaking with new Monzonauts – especially hearing that the reality of working at Monzo matches up to their expectations 🙌 – but it's equally possible to speak to people like Jonas (CTO) in their office hours.

Cons

As a bank Monzo operates in a (rightly) heavily regulated industry. Sometimes that slows us down; it means we can't necessarily do everything we would like, and if something goes wrong, it can be painful to make right. We're also growing up. The core values of Monzo "the startup" live on, but we're a mid-size, systemic bank now. Any change we make can impact over 5 million people. That's amazing when it goes right, but we also have to take a lot of care to make sure it does so. And edge cases now affect hundreds of people!

If you want to work on platform challenges, I'd suggest you specifically apply for a role in the Platform team. We have a lot of great tools and abstractions which speed us up working on product challenges, but I know some engineers on product squads sometimes miss lower-level technical problem solving. Some of the reviews on here are pretty mixed. I think some of that reflects the difference between customer support ("COps") and the rest of the team. If you're reading this and considering applying as a COp, I'd encourage you to go ahead and make your own judgement. For sure we've had growing pains in customer support. And some of the benefits might not be what they once were. But we still have huge positive intent, and the very core – including COps getting options like everyone else – remains.

Advice to Management

It feels like we're rejuvenated after the pandemic, with a lot of things moving in the right direction, so ... carry on?!

Additional Ratings

Work/Life Balance
5.0
Culture and Values
5.0
Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion
5.0
Career Opportunities
5.0
Compensation and Benefits
5.0
Senior Management
5.0

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