Loved every minute! - Motion Designer bei Ultimate Creative Communications: Mitarbeiterbewertung

The staff are very welcoming when you first start, especially given the limitations if you're not working in the office itself.

The onboarding process took weeks, to the point where some of the initial days my day consisted of having non-stop introduction meetings with staff members I never spoke to again. There certainly was a culture of "if you've been here a long time we like you, if you're new we don't" after the initial onboarding period. A clique-y culture has been mentioned on reviews that pre-dated my time at the company which supposedly were dealt, but my experience was that it was still there; just more subtle, which in a way is worse because it makes you unsure whether the distain you're getting is because of something you said or just the overall culture, when it's more out in the open you can at least dismiss it and move on. The development team were very elitist and if you didn't code in a very precise way then you were considered a substandard developer. Things like constantly using "advanced" terminology unnecessarily; something I've never seen done anywhere else, even at more successful companies/teams. It was like the management in the development side of things were trying really hard to make the development team like what people envisage the developers at Apple or Facebook to be day to day. The review process massively slowed down workload. I can understand having an approval process for deployments/merges of new code; but having to have someone approve 1 line of code change only to reject it because of a minor discrepancy between how they would have done it and how you did (eg their version was inconsequentially more "optimised" code). Ultimately I was let go after the probation period ended; the reasons given in the dismissal meeting included many issues that had never been raised to me prior and could've easily been changed had they been mentioned previously. I have my suspicions that the reason for the dismissal was actually because the company was failing to win bigger contracts at the time and had already reduced one department from 5 to 4 days a week, so they probably let me go in a cost-cutting measure on a "last in, first out" basis. What really irked me, even to this day was the fact that after the call dismissing me my work email and other factors immediately stopped working because they had cancelled them, which meant I was reliant on WhatsApp-ing the team leader to ask for clarifications about very important things like the nature of the notice period (ie whether I was paid for that period, something I needed to know so I could plan accordingly). In Summary, if you're looking to do business with this company or indeed work for them; I would highly recommend only doing so if it's your only other option.

Team Environment: The team at Ultimate is one of, if not the best team I've ever worked with. They are extremely supportive, recognise your wins and achievements, always offer help when needed, and are very collaborative. The culture is excellent. Learning Opportunities: At Ultimate, you have a monthly learning and development allowance (financial/time) to help you grow and expand your skillset and personal development. Flexible Work Arrangements: The company also offer flexible working, with a set of core hours, and flexibility either side of these, to allow for things like school pickups/drop-offs etc. This is extremely helpful. On top of this, the majority of work is home-based, but there is also the option to attend the office, if and when you'd like to. Innovative Projects: Ultimate work with a range of clients across many industries, and the work is varied and often allows us to use the latest tech and tools. The projects are interesting and varied, with a lot of autonomy and willingness to contribute new ideas. Benefits and Perks: Ultimate also provide tons of benefits, both financial and social, including flexible working hours, multiple staff social events, employee well-being, free and independent financial advice, birthday off, £500 a year L&D, company pension, MET Life death in service cover, employee assistance programme, NHS cash-back plan, and a technology purchase scheme.

Tight Deadlines & Budget Constraints: As is often the case, you're working in a fast-paced environment, often to very tight time and budget constraints, which can be stressful at times. However, this is the nature of the agency beast, and the support on hand from the team and management help balance this out as best as possible.