Fintech demands staff spend three days in the office
Another day, another fintech switching its work-from-home (WFH) policies. This time it's London based payments unicorn Checkout.com, which has faced a series of valuation cuts in the past year. As of today, Checkout is asking its people to come into the office a minimum of three days a week.
Checkout says the change will allow employees "to collaborate and build meaningful relationships."
Checkout's move may be popular. Its 3-day request, according to the eFinancialCareers fintech report, aligns more closely with the number of days the average fintech employee wants to be in the office.
Nonetheless, the move doesn't appear to be unanimously popular. Writing on Glassdoor, a senior engineer who left Checkout claims that staff wanted to be fully remote or in the office only one or two days a week. He said the "overwhelming majority" disagreed with the policy change, and he labelled it "tone-deaf and inflexible." Another London based engineer, who was laid off rather than voluntarily leaving, said he felt "no trust and no autonomy."
That engineer claims that engineers who don't like the new policy are leaving. Recent exits include Jacob Holland, a staff data engineer who spent nearly seven years at the firm. Holland's exit isn't understood to be related to the new in-office policy, but he's just quit for a more senior principal engineer role at Flock, which specializes in insurance for motor fleets. At the opposite end, it recently hired a product director from JPMorgan, who notoriously are returning senior staff to the office 5 days of the week.
Checkout's office does, however, have some advantages. Glassdoor reviews praise aspects like having "two monitors per desk with docking stations, free lunches every day (although small), clean toilets, showers & bike racks."
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