Sinking Fast
Verbesserungsvorschläge
From what I've heard the product is, from a tech-perspective great. With all of the investment the company has so much potential. Please please however, focus on training and investing in employees from the bottom up. Get them to feel valued because this is what drives the company forward.
Completely trim down middle and VP-level management - treat with suspicion anyone who describes their role within the company as 'strategic' - its a code word for doing nothing but have meetings. You need doers not disinterested 'thinkers' / networkers.
Founders - Don't be fooled by impressive CVs or a sympathetic personal connection - they are not pushing the company forward.
Arbeitsatmosphäre
Depressive. It has managed to capture all of the negatives of corporate culture with none of the stability and benefits to make it tolerable. HR do nothing to help engender a supportive atmosphere and so little goes into training and upskilling resulting in most employees feel lost, unmotivated and the result of it is a complete lack of productivity. Management can't see the wood for the trees though and employees hobble along happy to placate egoistic middle management with words.
Work-Life-Balance
Great! You can basically do nothing if you massage the right egos
Kollegenzusammenhalt
Its okay. BD languishes at the very bottom of my experience. The department is looked down on by the whole of the company which is both obvious and has a psychological impact on the team. On the other hand, the management within my department feel more like an absent parent than supportive leadership who want cohesion and team success.
People are all leaving, and this is why.
Its telling that the best performers leave and the lowest performers stagnate or get worse....
Vorgesetztenverhalten
Lets start with HR. I had several quite personal run-ins with this team. Not fit for purpose. I know this sounds scathing but I have very valid reasons. I had a genuine issue with toxic - manipulative behaviour and dishonesty from leadership in my department. I went to HR with valid concerns and questions even of the legality of that behaviour.
Rather than being taken seriously, I was gas-lit and told that perhaps my memory of the incident was inaccurate. In the words of HR 'I miss remember things all the time' - wow. That was my cue to leave.
The reputation of Prewave HR goes far beyond the company itself too and is widely known as sub-par in HR circles in Vienna.
Finally, its bloated. There is simply too much middle management. Also too many VPs and senior management. Too many people with big egos coming into the office each day talking 'strategy' but going around in circles while stringing together dozens of pointless meetings. It wreaks of inexperienced founders hiring for the sake of impressive CVs and not the capacity (or will) to do the job. How many 200k VPs does it take to screw in a light bulb? In Prewave's case - 7.
Kommunikation
Where do I start? This product is 10/10 in complexity and they add another feature or change 'strategic direction' every other week. But here is the kicker - they try to adapt the product to the market but leave every customer facing employee in the dark about what is relevant, how to sell and how to position the constantly changing product range.
Herein lies one of the oddest things about this company. Sales and sales operations are not only separated but managed by a different cofounder. They are constantly pulling in different directions and its baked into the structure. A key example of this is how operations have some opaque calculation for targets and commission which is revealed to the sales team at the earliest 1 month into the quarter. Do they feel this is inconsequential.
To add to this, what semblance they do have of 'sales enablement' (also on operations side) is small, blind and ineffective that the sales team is perpetually ill-equipped to do their job. Intro calls become guesswork.
BD management does nothing to help this situation with even basic training being reduced to 'its in confluence - look it up'. Nobody takes the time to listen to calls, feedback etc
Arbeitgeber-Kommentar
We’re truly sorry to hear that this was your experience. It does not reflect the culture or environment we are striving to build here at Prewave. That said, as a fast paced scale-up we are aware that we don’t always get everything right and so we need to hear all feedback - thank you. However; we do remain deeply committed to learning, growing, and creating a positive and supportive experience for all employees.
You’ve shared some serious topics which are concerning and we would genuinely welcome the opportunity to better understand your perspective and experience. If you feel comfortable, we encourage you to reach out to our confidential feedback space via feedback@prewave.ai.
Whilst your review was difficult to read - we sincerely thank you once again for taking the time to share your experience and we hope to have the opportunity to discuss it in more detail.