Interesting work, best colleagues, but be prepared to fight for your rights/income and get everything in writing.
Gut am Arbeitgeber finde ich
Interesting work, best colleagues I ever had, good office location.
Schlecht am Arbeitgeber finde ich
Behaviour of management can feel unpredictable and unfair. Not enough appreciation of devs. Can feel ignored with little guidance at certain times.
Verbesserungsvorschläge
Give more room for feedback and hold yourself accountable.
Arbeitsatmosphäre
Praise / Acknowledgement
I often felt devs were less recognized for achievements even though this is a SaaS company. I believe management is often not aware of the overtime / sacrifices made, especially!!! (can't stress this enough) from the Devops / Integration Team.
Working climate:
I felt a lot of pressure to finish things inside the estimates given at the beginning of a project, even though projects are so complex and requirements change a lot / are not clear, which racks up a lot of technical debt which only seldom gets resolved and makes future projects even more complicated and even simple things take some time in order to not break anything.
Tech Leads:
The tech leads for Backend/Frontend/Devops & Integrations are all insanely knowledgable and hard working and it was a pleasure to work them every day. On the (very) rare occasion things got heated, differences got smoothed out the following day and lessons were learned to prevent the same thing from happening again.
Project (Customer Manager / Sales / HR / Finance:
Not sure if these are their proper titles, but regarding the cooperation with non-devs I only have good memories, pleasent talks whenever we met.
Kommunikation
There were regular all-hands in which relevant news were broadcast so everyone was aware on what the current focus is and how the company is doing. They were kept short enough to not be boring and I felt I knew what was going in regards with the company at all times.
The communication with higher ups could be very exhausting at times. At certain points in time it felt impossible to get a meeting with them and everything got postponed / canceled which made me feel not being taken seriously / not valued.
Kollegenzusammenhalt
Every single Dev that worked / still works there was was pleasent to work with. I don't know how, but riskine seems to attract and hire motivated / nice devs. The biggest reason why I stayed for as long as I stayed.
Work-Life-Balance
Time off:
Requests for time off / work from home / other reasonable wishes were all fullfilled without pushback even when it caused extra work to accomodate for.
Overtime:
I felt obligated /pushed to work more and more overtime since this is what the others leads did. I believe I worked overtime every single week, but kept it to a minimum as best as possible but this fact was also brought up during income negotiations.
Leaving of the company.
My wish for leaving the company 2 weeks earlier than the notice period would have allowed me was fullfilled without any pushback which I am thankful for.
Vorgesetztenverhalten
Up until I left the company I had a good opinion even though I felt ignored / with no guidance at some times, but afterwards it became a bit sureal.
A variable part (goals of 2023) of my salary was still open when I left the company in the beginning of 2024. I complied with the request from my superior to postpone it 2 weeks but was ignored / not given a meeting until I involved HR which made me an appointment for the next working day. There, for the first time I heard a lot of harsh critique about my work and what felt like personal attacks.
The worst part about this for me, is that I requested regular check ins for the goals / variable part of my salary which were postponed / cancelled where all the critique could have been brought up and been taken care of, but hearing it 2! months after I left the company when talking about the variable income part of my work with no real way to prepare myself for this meeting felt sureal and unfair and bitters my whole experience at this company.
Interessante Aufgaben
This company grew a lot in the 5 years I worked here, so there were always new / interesting things to do and sometimes I even had the choice to decline tasks which I highly appreciate.
Other times I wished I had more time to clean up after a hasty deploy / fix but there was always more to do. I acknowledge it as a valid strategy of a growing company to expand quickly, but it made my life as a dev harder and sometimes led to what felt for me catastrophic failures and absurd amounts of stress and sleepless nights.
Gleichberechtigung
If, for whatever reason, somebody left the company temporarily and came back I didn't witness or felt they were treated differently / unfair.
Arbeitsbedingungen
Location:
Company location is in the middle of Vienna, reachable by bike / public transportation.
Office:
The office is really beautiful and a new kitchen was installed. Aircon / heating available as well (life saver in summer)
Hardware:
Hardware is state of the art.
Special accomodations if needed were installed / the company makes a big effort to accomodate everybody.
Working conditions:
It feels cramped and loud if a lot of people are showing up in the office, coupled with meeting rooms not being booked properly but used made it very tedious sometimes. I don't want to kick people out, especially not higher ups in a call, but also I need a meeting room to not disturb all the other people in the same room as me during hour long calls / brainstorming sessions.
Home office:
The amount of home office allowed is dependant on your role/team but felt fair and wasn't enforced /controlled super hard.
Umwelt-/Sozialbewusstsein
Paperless office, recycling, proper use of heating in winter/ cooling in summer. Fundraising for local charities / other good causes. Top
Gehalt/Sozialleistungen
Benefits:
There are more I believe, but the one thing I can remember is the payment of the public transit fares which is nice, especially in a city like Vienna with excellent connections.
Salary:
It was not clear for me when people are getting what kind of raise.
The first big raise I got was due to the fact that contracts were put online for new hires which would have earned more than me with similar / less experience. I believe my superior at that point wasn't aware of this discrepancy. I mentioned this and it was quickly rectified and I was happy again.
The second time I asked for criteria for a raise at the beginning of the year which boiled down for me to become teamlead / take more responsibility which by pure chance I actually became.
When I asked for a raise I felt mocked by the amount which ultimately made me leave the company. I would have gladly given back all the extra stress / teamlead responsibility I took upon me for the little raise I got. I wasn't even offered some other benefits which made me feel like I got taken for granted / taken advantage of.
Karriere/Weiterbildung
Further Education:
I can only speak for the dev part here.
There was no structured further education available to improve dev knowledge be it certificates or courses.
It was always learning by doing, which I felt like is a strength of people at this company, but again here I feel that devs are not taken fully serious by the company. The tech used is complex and can be overwhelming at the beginning so having an intro course about docker or other essential tech would have been nice / ease the pain of assimilation.
Arbeitgeber-Kommentar
Dear former colleague,
We are very sorry to hear, that some factors were less or not at all satisfactory for you. We always strive to be very honest and open with one another and would therefore like to offer you the opportunity to speak to us personally about this. Please contact us directly for an exchange.
We are currently working intensively on our new “riskine academy” to build up and promote the exchange of knowledge within the company. We regret that this further development comes too late for you and that you were not able to benefit from it.
We wish you all the best for your future career!
Kind regards,
Team riskine