I don't even know where to start..
Gut am Arbeitgeber finde ich
If you manage to stay there for a while, you can learn a lot and take your knowledge elsewhere.
Schlecht am Arbeitgeber finde ich
The way people are being treated had serious longterm repercussions on their mental and overall health and self-perception.
Verbesserungsvorschläge
A lot, but most importantly listen to your employees even though they are talking about things you don't want to hear.
Arbeitsatmosphäre
My last few months at Webgears have unfortunately been dominated by a really bad work atmosphere. Due to decreasing rankings and thus revenue, a situation the executive team didn't handle very well in many different ways, led to the increase of pressure and finger-pointing. If mistakes were made the affected employees always feared to lose their job. Often employees were made responsible for the negative outcome/consequences of the decisions made by the executive team. In the end fear and despair was everywhere. There used to be a good understanding of making mistakes and learning from them but the executive team has lost sight of that.
Kommunikation
I believe the executive team is the reason for the constantly poor communication within the company. Many times I noticed how information from the owner/founder/general manager down to middle management or employee level simply wasn't forwarded and the other way around. Once communication used to be considerate and respectful. During the end of my tenure at the company it was nothing but plain and simple mean, disrespectful and full of ridiculous accusations. Why would people deliberately want to hurt the company they are working for? Please reflect on that if you can.
Also, once people decided to take up another opportunity, the executive team and their loyal followers just stopped communicating with them completely. Once they left the company, the trash-talking in front of the other employees started, which is very unprofessional in my opinion.
Kollegenzusammenhalt
There was a time when the colleagues were the best in this company. There was a time when there was a team of motivated and ambitious people. We were all striving to work hard and to contribute to the company's success. When the leadership changed their style the managed to alienate and thus lose the majority of them. Nowadays all of them are gone. Well done - ET!
Work-Life-Balance
During the beginning of the pandemic, there was a big initiative by the HR department to improve the work-life-balance which was very much appreciated by all staff. However, once the money wasn't coming in anymore as it was desired by the leadership more and more of those freedoms were reduced. At some point the leadership basically forced everyone to put the company before their private life and was deeply and personally upset, when employees decided not to attend social events during the height of the pandemic, so they could visit their families over the holidays. Apart from that people were penalized if they were doing overtime in order to get their insane workload done.
Vorgesetztenverhalten
Where to even start... a bit inexperienced at first but back in the day generally not ill-meaning at all. Over the course of time most of them turned into wannabe tyrants. From their lack of communication skills, zero priorization skills, inability to distribute workload evenly to complete disrespect and no understanding towards their staff, it was a rather toxic mix. At least some of them were competent. It was interesting to observe how the most incompetent people were able to become thought leaders and manipulate the rest of them. I often felt bad for the owner because I don't think he has the right people in place and definitely shouldn't trust the majority of them, as the pose a risk to his livelihood. However, it has been going on for a while now and many people tried to give this feedback. Nothing has changed.
Interessante Aufgaben
I do have to admit that most of the tasks have been interesting and a great learning opportunity for me. But, there has been a lot of mistrust along the way and sometimes even complete disregard for someones experiences and competencies.
Gleichberechtigung
There is none. Period. The concept simply cannot be grasped by the executive team. And no, one woman in the executive team is not diversity. Calling women greedy, who are asking for a raise they clearly deserve, is everything else than equality. Only promoting men because they have recently became fathers and simultaneously penalizing every woman, who had a child, is absolutely disgusting (A Quote that was said quite often: "None of us forced her to have a baby.") Mostly a bunch of men, who are very much afraid of intelligent and competent women, are making decisions, which often end up in a complete disaster. I don't know, try to read a book once in a while or try to finally arrive in the 21st century.
Umgang mit älteren Kollegen
There are none, so this cannot be assessed. However, the lack of age diversity is often explained with the "high amount of digital skills needed" to work at Webgears.
Arbeitsbedingungen
There is no financial support for setting up a proper home office, at least not for staff or middle management. In general mostly outdated hardware is being used and if you ask for a new device you will have to wait for months, sometimes even years, unless you are a developer.
Umwelt-/Sozialbewusstsein
There were some green initiatives but all projects that were not contributing to the revenue were halted at some point and never taken up again.
Gehalt/Sozialleistungen
This is quite a hot topic: the leadership seems to react outraged when people ask for a salary increase. Most salaries are way under market value and the leadership is too ignorant to change that. Everyone who left received a huge salary increase in their new companies. Furthermore, there are no shares or anything similar like that.
Image
They went from too humble to too arrogant. Balance is clearly not their strongest suit.
Karriere/Weiterbildung
There are growth possibilities for some, but most people won't have the chance to get a promotion. The leadership often makes promises to their staff that they will promote them in the future, but never follow up on it. Instead staff is ridiculed when they ask about it.