ION's strategy is to buy companies to create a mega-group in Treasury and Financial software with a dominant position. After buying a company, they typically stop all investments in it, shrinking engineering resources, and lay off most of the sales teams.
With shrinking teams, there is almost no mobility in the ION group.
To make it worse, they impose non-compete clauses (1 year at competitors, 6 months at customers), which makes it difficult to leave the company, because most Fintechs are competitors.
Hence, the group is full of people who are locked in place with no prospects internally, and which teams have been shrunk, driving the morale low.
At the top level, the CEO makes a habit of yelling at his direct reports (or even below them), creating a culture of fear downwards. That participates to the static culture of the group, as people are generally afraid to propose any change.
Customers can be also very frustrated as many contractual negotiations need to go through the CEO, slowing things down. The CEO has been known to engage in bad business practices, taking advantage of the dominant position when he could.
Work/life balance isn't so bad, unless you are put on a high-stakes project, followed directly by the CEO, and then you're supposed to put 60+ hours a week.
