‘Is this place cooler than Stratajet?’ Was a question that was asked to me after being at Octopus Labs for nearly two weeks. In my head the answer was, 'no’, but I didn’t say that at the time, I sort of avoided answering it. After being there for nearly a month now, I think I would have answered that question a bit differently.

My time at Stratajet was fairly long as working in a tech company goes–almost six years. So when redundancies came although it was a shock, I was more than happy to move on. After a few months of searching; interviewing, and doing many code tests, I found a place I thought would be a fantastic place to work and took the offer given to me by Octopus Labs. Octopus is much larger, more established, and had many more projects to work on. Would I be able to make a smooth transition? Would I be able to make new friends? Would I be able to keep up with the workload? Those were challenges I was happy to step up to and anticipated. Walking through the large revolving doors on my seventh day of work I suddenly realised there was something I didn’t consider that I should of before I started working.

When I started at Stratajet I was in a room with 3 other people and the company generally grew since then hitting a maximum of  50. I saw the highs and lows and became close friends with all of the employees there, even the receptionists of the many offices we moved into. I had conversations with people in the lift, in the kitchen, on the way to the office if I bumped into someone, everywhere and anywhere basically. Octopus Labs has just over 100 people but there are many different 'tentacles’ of the Octopus Group. There’s Labs, Ventures, Investments, Property, Energy and Healthcare, together totalling around 700 employees, but that’s not all. Octopus share the same office with Sainsbury’s HQ, yep Sainsbury’s the massive supermarket chain, which brings the employee count to around 3000. A massive jump from the 50 at Stratajet I was used to.

Instead of greeting the receptionists when walking into the office, I get my pass ready and show it to a security guard without even looking at the receptionist or speaking to the 10 people I walk past on the way to the lift which is a silent ride all the way to the eight floor. The silence continues on my walk from the lift, to the kitchen, to my desk, that’s probably my fault for getting to work early but I still pass a handful of people who I don’t know and chances are, I will never get to know purely because they work for a side of the business I don’t need interact with. Working in a large company has its benefits, but a massive disadvantage if you’re new, only the people you work with know you’re new, everyone expects you to know how things work. This was evident for me in two scenarios, once when I walked into the canteen at breakfast for the first time, was clearly lost and uncertain of how the system worked, but no one bothered to help. The second time when I tried using the microwave, couldn’t figure out how it worked and the group standing next to me continued their conversation as if oblivious to what was happening around them.

It makes sense that an employee who’s been working in a large organisation and sees different people from different departments daily will expect everyone to know what they’re doing because, they usually do, but that might lead newcomers to pretend they know things and never ask questions and therefore will never know about a cool part of the office or an unusual feature the place has. I found that to be the case with some of the employees. 'How do you use the printer?’ 'What goes in those cupboards?’ 'what do they do in the offices next to us?’ 'What do they do in the offices behind us?’ All of there’s questions and a few more were answered with 'I don’t know.’ Although I later found the answers to all those questions later on by asking different people, it didn’t really help at the time with me getting to know the place more.

It’s easier to hide in a larger company, not in terms of work for Octopus Labs since the teams are so small it’ll be obvious when someone isn’t pulling their weight. Easier to hide in the sense that you could probably get away with saying pretty much nothing, which I’ve noticed some people do. They come in, walk straight to their desk, talk to people on slack all day, then walk out without saying goodbye. If you’re that sort of person that’s absolutely fine, just pointing it out as something that didn’t happen at Strarajet or something more difficult to do in a smaller company.

All that aside I’ve found some things I really like about working for Octopus and the more I work there, the more things I find I like. The work-life balance here is much better than it was at my old company. Bring a startup most people worked late to achieve difficult deadlines to reach targets set by the CEO to ensure we got the next round of funding. We worked weekends, stayed so late in the office the company had to pay for UBERs to get us back home. A typical day for me started at 08:30 and I left no earlier than 18:30, at Octopus, I’m out of the office by 17:45. There’s complete freedom to work anywhere in the building and you can also work from home whenever you want to as long as you mention it in the Slack channel around 09:00 which is perfect for times I need to let the plumber in.

My exploration of the office has lead me to discover a few things. A free pick and mix section which I’m surprised I wasn’t told about before as it’s a pretty unique selling point. A fire exit close to where I sit which gets me around the building quicker, especially if I need to make a quick dash to the sixth floor for a handful of yoghurt covered peanuts. Peanut butter hot chocolate from the coffee shop right behind the building, and a wide array of different food types which I didn’t really indulge in whilst at Strarajet, and finally, improving my table football skills. I never used the Ping-pong table at my previous company because everyone was a pro compared to me but I feel like foosball is something that’s easier to get into.

So back to the question that started this article, 'Is this place cooler than Stratajet?’. Well, Octopus is cooler than the Stratajet that exists now at the beginning of 2018 post redundancies. However, if we were to compare to Octopus now to Stratajet in its hay day (just before I was made redundant) I would say both companies are cool in their own way. Both companies are opposites in terms of stages in their life and I thank the Lord He’s given me the opportunity to work in both of them.

Ollie