Poorly set up incentives, bad management - Software Engineer Ocado Group Employee Review

- Disorganized, poor inter-team communication. - Not a meritocracy: incentives are set up so that you will get promoted if people (especially your manager) like you, not based on how well you perform. There are certain teams (for example TE) that try to compete with other teams instead of cooperating with them and it is discouraged to speak up if you disagree with something on team meetings. Avoid these teams at all cost. There is a reason why there are so many 5 star, and 1 star reviews and most of the 1 star reviews talk about the company culture. This place can be really nice or really bad based on which team you end up in and what manager you have. The problem is that higher management lets whole teams go on a really bad path by enabling team managers to hire/fire people based on their personalities (how much they avoid conflict) instead of skills, creating a comfortable environment for themselves where they cannot be criticized. This is a major disadvantage and I would not recommend people taking this risk.