As an aside, I would encourage people not to write off the CS as a whole if they have a bad experience (not pointed at Polar, I’m sorry to hear it hasn’t been positive). The CS is a huge place, made up of many departments and agencies, and of a multitude of professions too. Each have their own culture. Whilst there is a prevailing CS narrative, such as a focus on leadership, learning from outside and valuing diversity and inclusion, the day to day experience will vary even by office.
However, the CS is one of the few places in my experience where there is less emphasis placed on things like qualifications* and more on what you have done and can do, plus good benefits (in terms of things like maternity leave, sick pay, pension) compared with other public sector bodies and private sector. The fact that these are available to all grades and not just senior grades is a really good thing imo. Nonetheless you have to find the right place for you, in terms of department and profession at least. I know lots of people who don’t like working in my department for example, whereas I and loads of my colleagues think it’s great; on the other hand I used to work in a department that other people thought was ‘desirable’ but it just wasn’t for me. Equally I know that within a department the profession you’re in (eg Op Del, Finance, Policy etc) will also heavily shape your experience, I’ve known quite a few people to cross profession. The CS is the kind of place that generally supports that - you will unfortunately always get some managers or offices where that isn’t happening, but that isn’t the way senior leaders want it to be and a lot of different things are being done to try and reduce and ultimately eliminate that.
*theres a caveat to this, in that certain specific agencies and professional areas require specific qualifications and notice these things more, however on the whole I would say it’s not important for the main government departments; eg on CS Jobs I rarely see qualification requirements for roles in my profession at any grade, usually there is a ‘desirable’ for a specific qualification which is directly relevant to my profession but it’s usually accompanied by saying that the organisation will support studying for it which is commonplace. I’ve only seen one advert in the last 5 years that required that qualification, and it was in a smaller specialist agency.