Life@Monzo

That’s reassuring as reviews are so mixed.

Should get my Monzonaut licence 7th Feb :sunglasses: paperwork all complete :sweat_smile:

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i cant view without signing into glassdoor, but I cant comment fairly on this as Monzo is my first and only job so far :grimacing:

just asking people to share the gossip :sweat_smile:

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Hit 3 years this month and can honestly say it’s the best place I’ve worked. I came from a pretty toxic work environment and Monzo’s been a breath of fresh air. That’s not to say things can’t be improved, but they listen and do work on positive change. And I’ve no intention of going anywhere any time soon - it’s also the only place I’ve worked where I’ve had meaningful career progression.

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Wooohoooo!

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Knowing people that work there I think this is two sides of the same coin really. Everyone’s experience will depend on who their manager and team are primarily, and like everywhere that’s variable. Bad managers exist in every single company, managing people is difficult and takes experience. Good ones exist too!

There’s also a lot of people who want to work ‘in Monzo’ rather than ‘in customer care’ and predictably they are going to struggle, reading these reviews I see hints of that quite a lot. Just because a company is a good company, doesn’t mean you will enjoy customer care which is generally high pressure, unsociable hours, and can get difficult at times. It can be rewarding if it’s something you enjoy doing, a company can’t make that happen though.

Ultimately I think the company probably tries it’s best, but you can’t make everyone like their job. I think you’ll most likely have a great experience there.

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Well I’m moving from collections and recoveries in my current role to similar here.

The hours are probably the worst part for me, conscious of the work life balance; but I’ve no commitments other than a cat and a partner and both of those can fend for themselves.

I’m coming from legacy bank and their management team don’t move anywhere, so I’m hoping it’ll be a better route for movement here, plus, the majority if not all roles are remote; whereas since we moved to the north east, LBG are useless with agile working requests and opportunities for those whose choice is to work remotely.

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  • And we’re piloting a sabbatical scheme where folks who’ve worked at Monzo for 4 years get 3 months of paid leave

This is an interesting benefit. @Dan5 another year and you’re in :sweat_smile:

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That sounds great, I could imagine @Dan5 writing a book in that time!

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I have plans that definitely don’t involve writing a book (or my other half which she’s not too happy about :rofl:)

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I don’t think it’s fair to disregard a Glassdoor review by virtue of it being a Glassdoor review. Sure, all reviews have to be treated with a degree of scepticism (whether it’s for companies, products or services) but they still have a lot of value, especially for identifying trends when reviews are viewed in the aggregate. Speaking to Glassdoor reviews of “bad” jobs specifically…

There are a few important considerations when reading a review of a “bad” job, that is, a job in a role that is bad by default – customer support is one such role, arguably a role in competition for the title of “worst role”, whether it’s called “customer support” or “customer operations” or “community relations executive” or “vice president of relationship management for some esoteric feature”.

First, and most importantly, everybody has a different tolerance for and enjoyment of certain tasks and styles of working. Despite customer support being objectively bad, there are people who love helping others and enjoy it despite the downsides. Likewise, there are people who relish the opportunity to work in a high-pressure environment with strict targets… and there are people who will hate every second that they feel they’re being policed.

Secondly, while a company can’t change the nature of a role, it is a decision to operate in a way that necessitates certain jobs, and a business can be built to eliminate the need for certain jobs or mitigate the challenges faced by those performing that job. For example, it’s not a given that Monzo must have COps, Monzo could choose to eliminate customer support entirely and just point customers to an exhaustive FAQ, likewise, it’s not a given that Monzo must have their COps operating at maximum physical capacity, Monzo could choose to double the number of COps and reduce their expected capacity in half.

So, some of the questions we have to ask when reading such a review include…

  1. How does the job at Monzo compare to the same job at another company?
  2. Does Monzo deliver on the promises made during the hiring process?
  3. Does the experience shared reflect on the individual, the environment or both?

And if we’re to answer the questions when reading the review in question, we might conclude something like…

  1. A common theme amongst reviews (positive and negative) is the aggressive targets that necessitate COps to work at their maximum capacity with competition amongst peers used as a driver. Monzo is choosing to operate in this way, it is not inherent to the role. The same is true of the scheduling, it is not inherent to the role to have such varied scheduling.

  2. A recent job advert clearly states that “your shift pattern will change on a weekly basis” and provides an example of what this means in practice. The job advert does not speak to aggressive targets, and by extension, it does not reflect the way in which those targets are shared amongst peers.

  3. The review in question shares frustrations about the scheduling, which is clearly disclosed by Monzo as part of the hiring process. Although this type of scheduling is a choice made by Monzo, the fact that this doesn’t work for the reviewer reflects on their suitability for the job because it was disclosed. However, their frustration with the monitoring, targets and peer distribution of performance reflects on Monzo because it isn’t disclosed as part of the job posting, and is a choice made by Monzo in order to squeeze out maximum performance from employees.

My takeaway from the review is, therefore…

  1. Monzo is choosing to shape the job of COps in a way that is detrimental to people who may be very happy with the role itself
  2. Monzo is not adequately disclosing to prospective employees the true nature of the job

Personally, I have strong moral objections to companies choosing to do what Monzo is doing and I would consider these Glassdoor reviews to reflect badly on Monzo even if customer support is bad everywhere. Monzo could choose to spend more money to ensure consistent shift patterns, less aggressive targets, no monitoring and peer ranking, but they choose not to… but some people might have no problem with this behaviour! After all, Monzo is a business and businesses exist to make money, and so if this is what Monzo determines it needs to do to make money, it’s fair game.

When considering these reviews, what it’s like to work at Monzo etc., it’s important to first decide what matters to you. Lots of people in well-paid jobs (like engineers, managers) will never experience the pains experienced by COps so it’s pretty naive (or less charitably, disingenuous) to say “well Monzo is a great place for me to work…” – maybe it’s great because they choose to spend money on making your life great instead of spending money on making the lives of COps better.

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I respect your moral problems but I think they are mistargeted somewhat. No company treats it’s customer service staff like it does it’s engineers, that would be financial suicide. Engineers are hard to recruit and it’s a highly skilled job, customer service just isn’t that.

Monzo is a business in a capitalist system, you can’t really blame them for the system they are operating in.

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I don’t think the targets are aggressive (but I say that as somebody who has never had an issue hitting the targets). As an example if you’re working on frontline then you’re expected to deal with ten chats/customers an hour. I rarely work frontline and still I don’t have a problem hitting that target.

Perhaps some squad captains deal with it differently, but I’ve never worked in a team at Monzo where there’s direct competition between colleagues or the sharing of other colleagues stats. They’re always discussed in aggregate and as averages across the team.

So the characterisation that you’re creating is one I simply don’t agree with.

However, based on my experience when I interviewed three years ago, I think there probably is some room for improvement about being more up front with targets. Although I was asked in interview about dealing with targets, KPIs etc and I’ve never worked in a job where there aren’t targets and in both teaching and train driving those targets are much more onerous (and the penalties for not hitting them more severe!)

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Targets in train driving?!

Well to start with the timetable is one giant target, and you have safety targets and regular assessments and so on.

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Maybe they take delay repay out of the driver’s salary. :sweat_smile:

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I’ve always worked customer service whether frontline or back and I’ve always had pride in what I do, it’s your perception to brand it the worst role or whatever you like to say.

I enjoy it as it adds variety, I’m not a manager by trade and I prefer to be managed.

Without customer service, many businesses fall short, and people who frown on those who hold the fort and do the majority of the work for their customers need to take a back seat and thing again.

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@Carlo1460 There are certainly people who love and excel at customer service, I don’t mean to suggest that customer service people are lesser, quite the opposite, I think you characterise the importance of customer service very well: customer service is integral to a business and customer service people deserve to be treated much better than they are. I also disagree with any characterisation of it as low skill, because good customer service from people that are empowered by a business to work effectively can be fundamental to the success of a business.

I’m a software engineer nowadays but I spent years answering tens of thousands of support tickets, and I’ve managed lots of people doing the same, and I am confident in saying that customer support is a bad job, because of customers and because of companies, not because of the customer support agents themselves.

Apologies if it came across as if I was disparaging people in that role. I think customer support agents deserve equal to or better than treatment to people in roles that are perceived as hard to recruit for (like software engineers). I have never received death threats as a software engineer but they were a common occurrence when supporting customers.

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It is low skill though. You don’t need a degree and you generally only need the right personality type and a few weeks of training.

If it was high skill job you wouldn’t be able to recruit customer service people for £20k or whatever. This isn’t a personal attack on hardworking CS staff (I too have been there) but it is a reality of the job.

Depends on the role, it’s not just plain queries customer service teams handle, there’s so much knowledge in the front line, more so than management in my experience.

So you can recruit for £20k or more, sometimes £30k depending on the “skill”.

Complaints handlers, financial crime colleagues etc are all still customer service roles and pay significantly more than those handling the most basic tasks.

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I used to work in executive relations and I worked really high complaints and I started in customer service on 21,500 and before I resigned when I opened my own company I was on 26700k a year. I needed qualifications to get the customer service role and my employer put me through open uni as part of my academy progression

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