A tech company led by non-tech leaders - Avis employé Employé (anonyme) UnderwriteMe

1,0
17 oct. 2023
Employé (anonyme)
Recommande
Approbation du PDG
Perspective commerciale

Avantages

Owned wholly by Pacific Life Re so good benefits (including redundancy package). Swanky new colour coordinated London office complete with a working coffee machine, free milk, super comfy seating and even board games.

Inconvénients

During my tenure, the leadership team changed several times (I saw four Head of Tech/ CTOs) and with each change, a restructuring of the teams shortly followed. This repeated reorganisation of teams, combined with high staff turnover, has led to inconsistency of workload and focus for teams, the creation of a constant fire- fighting and hole-filling environment, and ultimately signals weak, indecisive and inexperienced leadership. I do not recommend UnderwriteMe if you are looking for a tech role. I do not recommend UnderwriteMe if you are based in the UK.

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Réponse de UnderwriteMe
2y
Hi it's Xander from the current leadership team. Thanks for taking the time to write a review. I agree that our relationship with our parent company means we have the stability and quality leadership that so many start ups and scale ups lack with their constantly pursuit of funding rounds. We have all the benefits of a well-established company with all the energy, pace, agility (and frankly, fun) of a scale up. I think of it as the best of both worlds! I'm glad you like the new office space - there's been lots of positive feedback on how it adapts perfectly to multi-use from stand-ups to shares to workshops and that there's space which works for those who like to be social and those who want to do more quite, deep concentration or confidential work too. You just can't put a price on a working coffee machine either!! I disagree that our turnover is high. We actually have turnover that is half of some tech industry comparators but we are not complacent and want to keep upgrading our employee experience. Winning a Company Culture award earlier this year was a great external validation that we are on the right track. I do however agree that there is a lot of change to grapple with but such is life in a nimble, agile start up that responds to both its external environment and it's own growth path to becoming a fully product-led business. In some ways the challenges that come up feed the need for variety that a lot of us have and we love to stretch ourselves. It's part of why we love working for a tech scale up! However, I can appreciate for people who prefer the much more traditional, slower moving nature of a large financial services institution, where life is very predictable and cyclical would find it difficult to feel at home.

Découvrez plus d’avis sur UnderwriteMe

1,0
8 juin 2026
Recommande
Approbation du PDG
Perspective commerciale

Avantages

Nothing related to UnderwriteMe, only the parent company whose benefits filtered down.

Inconvénients

Where do I start. Majority of the senior team do not have any idea how to run a product engineering organisation. Constant change in priorities, nothing delivered of any note. Constant change in senior team members with no improvement. Non-existent strategy. Constant surveys but nothing done with them. Management do not listen to employees. Constant in-fighting. Terrible blame culture, each silo protecting their own and blaming the other team. Complete lack of accountability. Data driven and metric driven, unless you are management who impose changes on 'gut feel'.

2
1,0
16 janv. 2026
Recommande
Approbation du PDG
Perspective commerciale

Avantages

Its all good; parent company has deep pockets nothing matters too much work life balance, many meeting to attend you may never actually do any work

Inconvénients

never ending identity crisis - are we underwriteme, pl re, pl... ancient tech + processes reactive

3
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