Pros
The people. I met a lot of friends there in the staff and in the startups that are really great people.
Cons
Clique - The whole company is built under a clique who live by different rules. The CEO has her 4 favourite people. They are all in senior positions, they are paid the most. She manages by listening to only what they tell her. They are all friends and it makes it uncomfortable to work. She lives with 2 of her employees, this causes clear favouritism. We had to pretend we didn’t know she went on a secret holiday with one of them with no warning (normal employees give 3 weeks notice). The only way to succeed in this company is to suck up to the CEO and the clique. A good employee is not measured by hard work, but by how much time you spend at RWE or with the clique.
Employees - She does not value at all the people who impact her business the most. The community teams are paid the least, get the worst end of the stick and the least respect. They make the company what it is because they make the experience. Many have been hired and fired quickly, some fired after years of devoted hard work for no reason. Teams have been cut and one person is expected to do four peoples jobs and she really doesn’t care. The stress level is horrible. The standard of service goes down because of this, but to management, money is more important than the quality of service for their members.
Unprofessional - Living with 2 of her staff is just the beginning. You are invited on work nights out and trips & encouraged to get drunk. But, if you do anything she doesn’t approve of, expect to be called up on it at work on Monday. She however can get away with it all. Mean and unprofessional comments made by the CEO was a norm. We would know she was going to fire people by the comments made around the office about them. She is extremely mean to female employees, it's very uncomfortable. She makes comments about their relationships with men, jokes at their expense, gossips about them. As a female CEO you would hope that she was for female empowerment, but 3/4 of her clique being men and looking at her management team you can see how this is not true.
Goals - She sets unachievable goals that are impossible to reach. You are judged against them. Everyone is fighting each other to get the goals instead of helping each other. You are constantly stressed, worried and trying to prove yourself. It will not work. People are too scared to speak up because they will likely be fired.
Career/Training - It is not somewhere for a career. The jobs you will do will really be every bad job your manager doesn’t want to do in most cases. Understandably as a startup, there is not much training. But there is not just no training, there is no explanation, no real role sometimes, and most people don’t want to help you. ‘Diving in’, literally means sink or swim with no help. You can guess how many people drown.
Pay - the pay you get is really not good. They sell it as a start up so you should accept it for the ‘experience’ but when it comes time for a rise coincidently you won’t have hit your (unrealistic) goal. Or if it does go up, it will be tiny. I wouldn’t hold your breath to be making half as much as people in her clique. They fly around the world, eat takeaways every night and have personal trainers, while you stay late to try and impress them and end up with nothing in your account at the end of the month. (If you don't stay late with them it is frowned upon, not a healthy way to live.)
TLDR
