Pros
- You can work from home
Cons
A Tale of Two Monzos Your experience at Monzo will vastly differ based on what your job title is. If you work in the office, are an Engineer/ work on the product, or manage a team, there's a good chance you'll have the 'Monzonaut' experience. If you are a COp, there's a good chance you'll have the worst working experience of your life. Monzonauts get a fantastic London/ Cardiff city office experience. They moved recently to a much larger, more modern space, and truly do get the 'bank of the future' lifestyle. The remote working COps get a home office supplement for a desk, chair, monitor etc. They also get £50 a month for lunch, in lieu of the free breakfasts, juice, alcohol and snacks the office workers get (Oh wait sorry, that was revoked). Monzo has a rampant target fetish that is enforced by micro-managing Squad Captains, who aren't qualified to manage a lamppost, never mind a team full of 15+ professionals that get treated like untrustworthy infants. Their desire to be the King of Target Mountain means that people of all domains have an unending fear of punishment and dismissal. If you don't meet your targets for a specified period, you are dragged in to a 'fact-find' meeting, which is to discuss the potential reason behind your lack of achievement. It does not matter what reason you give in this meeting, you're likely to be dragged in to a disciplinary anyway, as Monzo Squad Captains are mindless worker drones hellbent on making their worthless underlings miserable. Burnout is widespread, you are expected to work faster and harder than a Court Stenographer. All COp domains are targeted, even if management don't actually know what the job entails. I was once working on communication between Law Enforcement officials and the Financial Crime Team in the bank, which included triaging emails and GDPR requests. Their performance tracker, Looker, could not pick up data from the email platform we used, Front, and so my line manager dragged me in to a fact-find meeting. He was questioning why I hadn't shown any activity in the following metrics: Front Message events (emails sent), Tasks Closed on our internal system, and SLACK REACTIONS (Emoji reactions on Slack!!!!) This fact-find is particularly hilarious, as I was trained that I didn't have to send any emails, I didn't have to close tasks (rather, I had to open them), and Slack is our communication tool, so why would I be on there putting emojis on posts while I'm supposed to be working? Slack, the popular workplace communication tool, is a software that shows a list of channels, all serving a different purpose. You have squad channels, domain channels, announcement channels etc. You also have non-work related channels. This tool is used as social media. It is a Black Mirror-esque popularity contest which is used to decide promotions and important cultural roles (like a COps Council, a mediating bridge between management and the peasants). The more you get your face out there, emoji react until your fingers bleed, the more chance you've got to get moved up the pay scale. Speaking of, new COps who join this year, will get paid less than anyone else that joined prior. So two people doing the same job, will potentially be compensated very differently, and for a bank that wants to trailblaze, isn't a good look. Monzo, during a round of COVID redundancies, decided that the only person in the company responsible for Diversity and Inclusion, should be put up for redundancy. Monzo is a legacy bank wolf in new shiny cool start-up sheep clothing. As long as they *look* like they're diverse, they don't care if they actually are. My experience was one of an outcast, as I was Scottish rather than an Eton College graduate. I consistently felt like my working class background was looked down upon. Be hard on people, not problems. Monzo's catchy progressive employee slogan - "be hard on problems not people" is totally reversed. You will be dragged through corporate barbed wire if you dare mention that you have a mental health problem that goes beyond "my avocados aren't ripe :(" It will forever and always be used against you, serving as ammunition to kick you out the door. In meetings with your manager, if you've performed below target, and previously told them about mental health issues, they'll treat you like it's mental health related. They are not equipped to deal with complex mental health issues, and incompetence is rife. I raised a grievance against my manager, as they had a pattern of disrespect and bias against me, consistently treating me like I'd had a mental breakdown. This particular monzobot must have had a shrine in his house dedicated to targets, or maybe he wanted to be Star of the Week. He gave me a final warning after a target-based disciplinary, without ever giving me a first warning. During my grievance against him, I was at risk of losing my job due to this warning, so I threatened an ACAS employment tribunal on the basis of discrimination according to the Equality Act. I requested retraining (the lack of training and support provided led to poor performance) and a new manager. I was given these, with the training happening 5 months later, but the new manager happened fairly quickly. I was under the impression that the grievance chair agreeing with me would lead to the final warning being forgotten about, however this came back to bite me. They tactically and expertly avoided specifically agreeing about my line manager's bias. This meant, when the time came, they could use his baseless allegations against me as they were fair play. As it took so long to receive retraining, my struggle was greatly increased. I was given a week of training, which was better than my initial training, but no real improvement in the content. Due to mental health issues, I was supposed to receive an amendment to my schedule, promising consistent working days (but chaos in the hours I start and finish), however this was not given before the termination of my contract so I did not get the chance to perform adequately according to what would have been conducive with my mental health. They terminated me based on a lack of achievement, which was brought on by complex anxiety issues. Since the allegations from my old line manager were fair play, they used them to produce the idea of a pattern of work avoidance and acting against their Code of Conduct, specifically integrity. When I was let go, my work laptop became a shell, and I was not permitted to say goodbye to people I spent 2 years forming relationships with. It seems as though Monzo give their Squad Captains a disciplinary and dismissal quota to reach. Monzo is a rocketship: Apollo 13. Monzo marketed themselves as a trendy spending card, and now struggle to understand why people don’t pay their salaries in. They now punish the average user by introducing fees for things like replacing cards, and the accounts have lower spending limits. This is blatant incompetence (who’d want to entertain a bank that punishes them?). This, coupled with the Watchdog special that happened in 2019, makes Monzo a bank that’s hard to trust. The Watchdog report was born out of a consumer misunderstanding, however the public will never forget this report. Monzo is not making a profit, and is struggling to figure out how to do so. Each product launch is a shot in the dark to see what sticks. If you’re looking to get a job here, don’t. If you’re currently employed here, GET OUT.
