I worked at Appen in a senior management position for over a decade, having been recently laid off due to declining company revenue. I managed a team of engineers in a role that was appreciated by the operations teams and people on the floor as one that was critical to the success of projects, and one that drove millions in revenue each year. Equally however my role (and that of my team) was seen as a complete waste by upper management. I'm very proud of the team I ran - I had the lowest turnover rate of any team in the company, worked on a shoestring, and used our experience and diverse range of skills to great effect.
Unfortunately the work we did was also almost entirely invisible to those up the chain, so for many years I’ve been operating on what I’ve internally always known as borrowed time. Ultimately my job over the last few years in particular became more about protecting and preserving my team functionally and politically as best I could, for as long as I could. I'd hide things from my team. I'd shield them from decisions made that could affect them negatively, reduce morale, or make them less productive. At times I hid my team and what they did from management. I did all I could to keep my team productive and ‘around’. This was at great personal cost, with my own mental and physical health becoming very poor and needing external support. I would typically work anywhere from 70-100 hours each week, every week - and I did this for years on end without leave. Despite being on the brink of quitting several times I never could quite do it, knowing that I would have failed my team and let them down. I always knew that if I left, they’d get the chop - so I just couldn’t do it. It became a game of how long I could hold out. I never thought I’d be the sort of person to work in a way that would become harmful, but I really have lost a lot personally that I fear I’ll never get back.
I want to be very clear that Appen is ultimately not a place you want to find yourself in. The company presents itself as a vibrant, dynamic, and high-tech startup - one with similar 'cool' vibes to the likes of Canva, Scale, Atlassian etc. However this is not the case. The reality is that the scores on this site are highly skewed by temporary crowd workers who perform piecemeal work on our digital platform, who are told to write positive reviews in order to grow the crowd. The experience a typical employee receives is not a good one. Appen is not a startup. It is not a fun techy company with a cool culture. It’s a 25 year old company run mostly by old white men with a poor understanding of the business model, and a declining share price. That is reality.
The company will do for you the bare minimum that a company must in order to satisfy the laws of the country it operates under, and will do no more. Loyalty and respect is a one-way street. You will be expected to work 50-70 hours a week. You will receive no sense of satisfaction when a job is well done. Your pay will typically be below market rates, particularly if you work in an operations-facing role. Very few people receive financial perks of value. You will be expected to wade through a chaotic workplace environment with little support from management. The work you will do is often boring and repetitive (I hope you know your pivot tables), and you will not see a bigger picture of how you fit into the organisation. Most employees will never see a pay increase significantly above inflation, even when title changes or promotions take effect. Furthermore, while you will be asked for feedback each year in company surveys, nothing will ever materially change in response.
The company is heavily sales-led, with most of the executive and upper-management experience being from this area and not in the engineering or data science space. As such, product development is poorly executed and our business is being eaten by our more nimble, hipper competitors. This disconnect really is demonstrated in the project quoting and solution design phases of projects.
* Bid process leads to many unprofitable projects where there is no adequate tool or clear process to actually deliver the outcomes required.
* The above results in huge amounts of manual human overhead. To satisfy this, Appen employs project specialists on poor wages who sit and do manual manipulation of excel spreadsheets from dawn to dusk. Naturally, staff turnover is high and retention of quality staff/knowledge is poor. Staff costs are therefore high and job security/morale is low.
* Sales/management have a poor understanding of our products and solutions. This leads to badly managed handovers to operations, impossible timelines, and selling services to clients we know we cannot deliver.
Ultimately I have now been laid off, along with my team. As a final ‘thank you’, the method and communication used couldn’t have been colder or more mechanical.
