Toxic management culture overshadowing some great team members - Data Scientist AO Employee Review

Head of department was a bully. This is widely known within the company, yet they continue unchallenged. I’ve never come across anything like it in my career. Very problematic hiring and management practices within the team. I saw multiple people fired or contracts ended early. I sat on an interview panel where nobody, inc the HoD, understood the role we were hiring for. HoD admitted to being “50/50” on the candidate, and hired them anyway saying “that’s what the probation period is for.” Multiple people have left the team for the same reasons, inc a senior hire who left within weeks of joining. Several managers, each with ~20 years of experience, have been on the receiving end of the same behaviour and report the same feeling where you doubt every decision you make and don’t know when you’re next going to be sworn at or publicly humiliated. The CEO is very anti-workers rights; you can hear this for yourself in his BBC interview. He also loves to threaten to fire people. He doesn’t trust people to work from home. There’s a myth about ‘AO speed’ which is just an excuse to bully people and make management feel special. In truth nothing moves very quickly because they scared of change. Lots of people who have never worked anywhere else and are very much big fish in a tiny pond.