Pros
The people, flexible time off, working for a good cause, and opportunities for learning.
Cons
I’d like address two areas: my experience while working at Switchee and my experience being made redundant by Switchee. While working at Switchee, some of the things that I did enjoy were the flexible time off policy, the opportunities to learn new things, the fact that Switchee is working towards a good cause, and the people at Switchee who for the most part are very smart, lovely people. However this was offset by a few issues. My salary was very low when I joined Switchee, I tried to address this with my manager but the only way I was able to get a meaningful change in salary putting me closer to market value was by leveraging an offer from another company, and after getting this increase I received weird comments from the CEO about my performance (which did not align with feedback from my manager about my performance being good and that he would not know much about anyway as he never worked directly with me or asked me about my team’s work). Another issue at Switchee is that while they promote inclusivity and openness, anytime it actually matters these things are completely disregarded. Some examples of this are Switchee scheduling one of their mandatory retreats during Ramadan, or their extreme secrecy about people leaving the company despite constant requests to be more transparent. The main reason that I would not recommend Switchee as a place to work is really how they handled the redundancies. Switchee announced right before Christmas that a large part of the company would be made redundant. They tried to frame this as a kindness (“we want you to have your support system during these hard times”) despite it being well known that holiday times are often the most difficult times for people’s mental health. To me this was extremely frustrating as it was another example of Switchee framing themselves as open, and kind when everyone would have appreciated the honesty of admitting that the timing was due to financial strains on the company. During the initial stages of the redundancy, Switchee assured us that they would do everything in their power to make the experience as easy as possible. They told us they would consider payment in lieu of notice, flexible end dates, and anything that would help set us up for success however once again this was not my experience. Because of the redundancy I decided to move abroad and because of this requested a payment in lieu of notice for tax purposes, I was denied that and told that actually, nobody would be getting PILONs and that Switchee had made a mistake in telling us that they would even consider it. I also requested a specific end date to make my move abroad easier (and because I found it painful continuing to work with my friends and colleagues knowing that I was being let go), I had already provided ample handover as I had a month’s notice that I was being made redundant however my request for that was also denied. A few more smaller things during the redundancy that I found hurtful were that after nearly 4 years of working at Switchee, I had to set up my own goodbye meeting and my manager did not organize for a card (which was typically done for other employees leaving the company). I also was quite concerned to find out that the person put in charge of the QA department in my place was the device team lead who is a lovely person but has no QA experience whatsoever. Because of how Switchee treated me during the redundancy after almost 4 years of me being dedicated to supporting and improving the company, I cannot recommend it as a place to work.
