D3t is an OK place to work that is falling behind the competition.
Pros
- Contract work means you get to work on a lot of big titles and don't spend 4-5 years on a single project. - Job security. The company is often working on multiple big projects at once, which means if one falls through (which is rare) it wont lead to mass layoffs. Also no layoffs in between projects as you will usually move onto something else the moment you finish. - No micromanagement. Given a lot of autonomy and trust when doing the job. - A lot of very friendly people and a very open culture. - Encouraged to take breaks as needed. - Partially flat company structure, Juniors and Mids will often have just as much say as Seniors. And Juniors are treated with respect. - No mandatory crunch. - Great response to Covid so far. Didn't delay and moved people out of the office the moment it was starting to become unsafe rather than waiting for a government mandate. Didn't force everyone back into the office the moment restrictions were lifted.
Cons
- Childish behaviour (including from seniors) is not only tolerated but sometimes even defended by the company. Everyone has bad days, but when it happens often and the company takes the side of the childish employee it isn't a look that inspires confidence in the company. - Low salary with a very opaque and secretive pay structure, bonuses are also opaque. I have been lied to about how pay and pay rises work by several managers. - No clear career path. Assistant (Junior) to Mid is purely based on time at the company and comes with no pay rise. How to advance from Mid to Senior is a black box with management having different ideas about how it works. - Claim to focus on retaining employees rather than hiring in. But this is often not the case. Someone who worked their way up to senior will likely be making less money than someone hired in as a senior. Which makes jumping ship far better for career/pay prospects than remaining at the company. The focus on retaining seems to purely come down to the no crunch mantra and giving free goodies to employees. Both are nice but the main factors in retaining most employees is career opportunities and pay. As evidenced by the staff turnover in the last couple of years rising quite sharply (often downplayed as just a result of hiring more people). - Overly reliant on the no crunch policy attracting talent. This was a unique selling point 10 years ago, but is far more common now, even in the same area there are several devs that don't crunch. - IP clause in contract means you are not allowed to work on your own commercial products in your own time. - Little room for training. If you want to learn a specific disipline you will likely have to do it in your own time. This is the nature of contract work, however it is made worse by the IP clause as you can't do anything with commercial with anything you make/learn in your spare time. - A few employees seem to get special treatment, while the rest go almost completely ignored by higher ups. - People who work voluntary unpaid overtime seem to have the fastest career trajectories (whether this is true is hard to know due to the vague career paths, but in personal observations this seems to be the case). Which leads to people who want to get ahead quick working a lot of extra hours. D3t management will make very weak efforts to stop this but no actual restriction is ever put in place, leading to a culture where it can feel like you will be passed over if you don't work unpaid overtime. - Don't ask, don't get culture. The loudest most demanding people get their pick of the projects and work while people who keep their head down and do the work assigned to them (usually the less interesting work no one else wants) are basically ignored. This also goes for pay rises. - Forward thinking in some regards (no crunch) but stuck to old ideas in other areas (IP clause, Pay structure, career structure). - Very slow to make decisions, whether we can work from home permanently has been up in the air for nearly a year now with no answer seemingly in sight. - Currently requires living in the middle of nowhere unless you want to spend hours commuting. A permanent work from home policy may fix this. - Loud office makes it difficult to focus.
