Avantages
As many other reviews mention, one of the best things about Onefile is some of the amazing people throughout the company. There are genuinely passionate individuals that really care about the work they do and the people around them. Within R&D, key team members within Product, Dev, and QA have been invaluable; always helping to refine ideas, share knowledge, and work towards creating the most valuable solutions together. Beyond the R&D department, there are UX cheerleaders across the company that have supported and advocated for UX efforts. A highlight has been the opportunity to work on many new products and initiatives. I think it’s rare to be able to truly build a product from scratch and own product decisions, which has been an exciting challenge. There’s an atmosphere of autonomy and flexibility within product. I’ve been trusted to decide what work to focus on each day and which activities provide the most value to what I’m delivering. While this has changed in recent years and there have been mixed emotions, a hybrid working model is in place. This is currently 2 days a week in office for most (the office is based in Deansgate, Manchester). I think this is decent and somewhat standard for many tech roles now. Benefits inherited from the parent company, Harris, are strong. This includes a decent amount of annual leave, private medical & dental, access to wellbeing resources, and a popular annual ‘lifestyle reward’.
Inconvénients
A lot of frustrations in my day-to-day work life have revolved around a low UX maturity, limited resource, and a lack of process and structure. The product team is small and collectively they work across over 7 products. It would be an understatement to say that they are overloaded. Additionally, constant conflicting priorities that are poorly managed require each team member to be constantly context switching. Personally, that drained me and burnt me out most weeks. For a 20 year old company, the lack of process and structure within R&D is shocking. Huge new initiatives are just dived into without any prior respect towards UX research, requirements gathering, project plans, scope definition, or setting KPIs and defining what value a project will bring and what success looks like. ‘Agile’ squads are having to experience constantly incomplete sprints and rushed releases due to leadership demands. A huge lack of cross-company communication and involvement means both the product and other departments suffer as knowledge isn’t shared. Where issues and solutions have been raised, most are brushed off. Trialling kanban, setting a definition of done, including a UX/UI review, and involving the wider company from day 1 are just some examples of ideas that have been ignored. I feel so much negativity is caused by the lack of process, because nothing is protecting individuals or the products, and it is affecting quality, value, and a sense of achievement. Sadly, from what I learnt through talking to staff that have been there for years, and through exploring the internal wiki, it appears many old practises that once worked well have just been lost and forgotten in recent years. Noone ever liked me bringing this up, but why wouldn’t you want to learn from the past to keep what works and change what doesn’t? Interestingly, recent chats with the newer CEO (of ~18 months now) suggest a lot more process and structure may be implemented in the near future. Although ~18 months ago we were told every department would be spoken to and opinions would be gathered, R&D are yet to experience this. Most other departments have been through structural changes (which have sadly included redundancies). Potentially it will change for the better soon, but it is hard to work through times of change. In terms of UX maturity, I believe Onefile sits at Stage 3, ‘Emergent’ – “UX is not yet prioritised as an essential strategy”. While the product team makes their best efforts to conduct user research and include UX suggestions in new features, the function of UX as a whole is not given enough time, budget, resource, or respect to truly be conducting user centred design practises across the full UX lifecycle. Simply put, you will not see improvements to your NPS and UX feedback until you start to actually respect, learn about, and implement better UX practises. I requested a full-time user researcher multiple times, and I think a service designer could be of great use for the company too. But I think most people still don’t understand how much UX can do and what value it can bring, despite my best efforts. I think many people still think and simply just want a UI designer to quick fire off designs. But this is not going to bring you any real value or improvement. A company-wide example of the disrespect has been a recent rebrand. I accidentally found out a rebrand was happening via an offhand comment made by an SLT member. If I hadn’t have heard this, and then subsequently pushed to be involved, I never would have been in that conversation. Blame it on conflicting priorities and a lack of resource, but it was disappointing. Even when involved, feedback around conflicting colour choices and accessibility have been ignored. Many times I have pushed for change, I have brought ideas to the table, I have tried to take ownership of different moving parts; but so many times I have felt like I am just banging my head against a brick wall. I truly hope the next person can be the change and growth in UX maturity that I couldn’t be. Outside of the work, a major impact on my wellbeing has been Onefile’s clique culture. I don’t doubt that different business departments attract different types of people anyway, and my learning has been how clear that can be within a small company. However, when one clique is being very obviously favoured by leadership, it is seriously painful and disappointing. When a new ‘people and culture’ club was formed I jumped at the chance to be a representative. On day 1 I was pushed away from taking the chair role. Where I wanted to get real feedback on culture and work towards inclusive social offerings, this was overlooked. Where I tried to add structure to the club to make sure every member was being heard, this was overlooked. When I made slides for the office screens and they were complimented in chat, they were never then used in office. I genuinely wanted to do better for everyone, but I was once again just banging my head against a brick wall. So instead the culture club is clique that favour themselves, ignore others, and are encouraged by SLT members to spend the company budget on what they want. I will repeat this in the advice section below, but to SLT – It is your duty as leadership and management to include everyone equally, to avoid favourites and cliques, and to avoid putting yourselves on a pedestal. At the simplest level, at least say good morning to everyone when you walk through the office. Despite everything talked about above, my primary reason for leaving is due to a lack of training and career progression. Where I wanted to change functions, this simply wasn’t possible with the team size. I checked listings within the wider parent company too, but nothing was the right fit for me. I did request product training and qualifications multiple times, but it always went quiet and never came into fruition. A couple of years ago when my ambitions were different, I was given a fake promotion to a ‘Lead UX’. I say fake, because the promotion came with no compensation or growth in responsibilities, so I think it was an attempt to satisfy me. I ended up asking for it to be stripped back. What I think this is also an example of really, is again a lack of structure in expectations of different roles and levels, and how you can progress. There are no KPIs, performance isn’t really tracked, and there is 1 annual performance review where I had been explicitly told that no one would be marked as ‘exceeding expectations’ – so why bother trying? I want to know that I am growing and continuously learning, and I want recognition for that. I want to know where I can progress and what I need to do to get there. The lack of those frameworks has a huge impact on motivation.