Great mission, but the responsibility is "lean"
Pros
The mission is real. This isn't a company slapping a green logo on a product and calling it sustainability, people here actually care about the energy problem, and it shows in the day-to-day culture. If you're the kind of person who likes building things from scratch and truly owning your domain, there's genuine opportunity here. I proposed many improvements and shipped a fair amount of them. That kind of autonomy is hard to find. My direct manager has been a genuine advocate for my growth. He backs me when it counts, gives me air cover to push for the right things, and doesn't micromanage. That relationship has been one of the best parts of the job. The cross-functional teams are great to work with. Security, DevOps, Platform, there's no true territorial nonsense. People just want to get things done and they're open to collaborate. That's refreshing compared to places where every team guards their turf. The tech stack is interesting and there's always something new to sink your teeth into. If you're self-driven and want to make a real impact, you absolutely can here. You'll have the space to explore it. There's room to build things properly, whether that's knowledge bases, support systems, or processes, and actually see them get used. That's satisfying when you're given the freedom to do it right.
Cons
Being one of few non-UK team members means communication is a constant battle. Decisions get made in time zones you're not awake for. Context gets lost in Slack threads overnight. You're always slightly on the back foot, and it takes real effort to stay in the loop on things that UK-based teammates absorb passively just by being in the room. Multiple times a week, something in motion will have its course totally changed on the whims of someone in the UK, and you are often left to pick up the pieces or make sense of the change in direction. There's a disconnect between who supports your growth and who actually makes the call on promotions. You can have your direct manager fully in your corner, championing your case, and still feel like you're pitching uphill to a decision-maker who isn't across your day-to-day impact. That's demoralizing when you've been doing the job already. The company's approach to AI adoption has been... enthusiastic, bordering on irrational. Using AI across various functions is fine in principle, but it doesn't always leave room for practical pushback or nuanced conversation. When you raise concerns, it can feel like you're swimming against a current that's already been decided on. There's also a noticeable culture among a significant chunk of staff where any criticism of AI is met with glazed-over enthusiasm rather than genuine engagement. It makes it hard to have honest discussions about where AI actually helps versus where people are just drinking the Kool-Aid. Some teams are told they're not using AI enough. Work can often be a real grind, not because the work itself is hard, but because you often find yourself justifying things that should be table stakes or trying to make a case for overcoming what should otherwise be a small hurdle. Trying to get these things across shouldn't require a presentation to get buy-in, but sometimes it does. When you hit a wall, you'll spend twenty times longer explaining why something should be done than it would take to actually do it.
