Pros
- Thrown straight into the deep end so you’re forced to learn quickly - Some nice people still working there - Winter coats are allowed in the office due to holes in the walls. - Very much a startup environment. Good if you enjoy living life on the edge.
Cons
- No onboarding experience - you’ll be given minimal context to the role and expected to figure things out. - They won’t understand what you do - be ready to explain why you’ve been hired to your team and the founder. - Extremely weak branding - the founder’s expertise lies heavily in B2B wholesale environments - not D2C ecommerce. There will be continuous pressure on small teams to hit punchy forecasted figures and an ever growing frustration from the top down. Brand guidelines are non existent and no scope to influence who ‘Brakeburn’ actually are due to stubbornness. So many people have left, that you’ll be lucky to have a manager with any expertise in your field. - Minimal cash left - The result is a brand which cannot compete on anything other than price. Inflated revenue figures but extremely low profit margins in heavy, drawn out 70% off sale periods. What you now see is a company barely scraping through with enough cash before they reach their next, low margin sale period after lying to customers that this would be their ‘last chance!’ - it’s only a matter of time before Brakeburn will need to make additional severe changes to the structure of the company. - False promises & lack of structure - these deep rooted issues are harming the company’s finances and you won’t get a pay rise despite being promised a review in X amount of months. You’ll be told the company is doing fine, whilst hearing that we need to urgently pull out of anything costing money and your pay arrives late. Many contracts have been issued to new employees late, after their start date. No one has an official up to date job description, so very little boundaries or tracking of your job performance, more just an expectation to ‘muck in’ which is only getting worse with more people being made redundant or resigning on the spot. - The extremely tired and worn down office is more like a neglected warehouse with a few desks and screens inside. It’s a visual representation of how Brakeburn like to operate and treat their staff. - Rude senior management - as much as you would like to ask for things in writing, don’t. Brakeburn don’t have time for that. You will quickly learn their deceptive ways of working.