Challenging place to build a Product career. If you’re looking for strong product leadership, clear coaching and a supportive environment to grow in, this may not be the best fit right now.
Heavy reliance on contractors and agencies. External partners often have a louder voice in decisions than permanent staff. It can feel like contractors are steering direction while employees are still held accountable for outcomes.
Product leadership is weak on people management. The senior Product leaders are clearly capable in some areas, but people leadership is not a strength. The style is very directive and can come across as emotionally distant, with limited focus on wellbeing, career development or coaching.
Micromanagement and low trust. There is a tendency to manage very closely rather than empower teams and I think this is down to a very immature product org. Pushing back or saying “no” (even with good reasoning) can be uncomfortable, which doesn’t create much psychological safety.
“Data-driven” in theory more than practice. There is a lot of talk about experimentation and data, but in reality insights are not consistently used to drive decisions, especially when they conflict with existing preferences. People are afraid to say no to commercial and trust extremely poor research from agency partners to back up decisions.
Agency spend vs value. Significant budget goes to agencies and contractors, but it’s not always clear how this translates into measurable business or customer value. Never known a company waste so much money.
Pay and progression are underwhelming. Compensation is not especially competitive for the level of responsibility, and the path for progression in Product is not very clear or well supported. I would suggest if you wanted a career based around product led growth this isn't it.
