Great job if you stay at the lower tiers, avoid if you are ambitious
Gut am Arbeitgeber finde ich
The co-workers and working hours. Good food. Nice additional perks.
Schlecht am Arbeitgeber finde ich
Gaslighting of employees who raise concerns, hypocrisy over stated company values (radical candor, equality and diversity), nepotism, lack of rewards for high-performers, anything being done improperly is excused as "we are a start up" even though the company is very established.
Verbesserungsvorschläge
The company urgently needs to address a toxic middle management culture and poor HR department. Failing to listen to concerns from employees doesn't mean that concerns stop existing. It just means senior leadership doesn't hear about them. The company will not survive the oncoming upheaval of AI until employees feel free to speak up, teams are given the freedom to work how they need to to reach company goals, and innovation and change are truly embraced when ideas are generated at lower levels rather than at the top. Actions with individuals employees have further consequences. The world of tech is small and good people will be put off applying if current employees are treated badly.
Arbeitsatmosphäre
Writing in English so as to reach international employees
If you are looking for a job to do the basic minimum in and you stay at the lower tier of the company, you will have a great time. Most of your co-workers are great, there are nice lunches, you can work from home, there are lots of fun social events. You get perks like a transport card and urban sports. This is why people leave good reviews.
If you scratch the surface or if you are promoted to dealing with any level of middle management, then you will swiftly realize that this is a very toxic company with a deteriorating work culture. The company claims they want radical candor. They mean by this they would like to be aggressively critical of employees, but if any constructive criticism is fed upwards to management, or suggestions made, it provokes extreme hostility. Every time there is a brief avenue for upward feedback with surveys or ask me anythings, it is swiftly removed as the company doesn’t want to hear anything negative. They mistake not hearing about problems for problems not existing.
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I think the company leadership genuinely believes the message they are pushing, but they lack the insight to see how this is not being reflected in employees daily life, and employees are now too scared of negative consequences to speak up.
Work-Life-Balance
Working hours are good. Those who make a strong work-life balance do best because the people who go a step further and give the job their all are rarely rewarded for it.
Karriere/Weiterbildung
Adequate time is set aside for employees to learn new skills like AI. However, many of the leadership positions are filled by friends and family of the founders, regardless of their background or expertise, which limits upward progression for those who didn't know the founders 10 years ago. I think a re-evaluation of who would be the best people to fill senior leadership roles would benefit the company significantly.
Gehalt/Benefits
Benefits (parties, urban sports, transport card) are good. If you want to put in the bare minimum or you are a working parent who wants to devote their energy to kids and see your job as a way to pay the bills, then salary is fine. If you are ambitious or want to be rewarded for hard work or additional responsbilities, then find a different job. At best you will be getting a below inflation pay rise. Company spending is extremely erratic; you'll get told to book an expensive flight to a retreat that doesn't need to happen in that place, but then you get huge pushback if you try and give a low-paid employee a 50 euro a month pay rise.
Umwelt-/Sozialbewusstsein
Vegetarian and vegan food is available daily. There's cycle parking, cycle subscription service, and public transport ticket provided to reduce carbon footprints. However, lots of unnecessary travel to foreign offices. No offsetting of environmental impact of increased AI use.
Kollegenzusammenhalt
Most people stay in this job for their peers because the company attracts a lot of good people from its stated mission (which sadly it generally doesn't live up to)
Umgang mit älteren Kollegen
Older employees are hired, but long-serving colleagues frequently do not feel valued or promoted. Teams lose experienced people with expertise because of stagnant pay and because the company is not willing to listen and change. This means an exhausting cycle of retratining new employees who stay for a couple of years before becoming disillusioned and leaving.
Vorgesetztenverhalten
Immediate managers are often good but they are micromanaged by an extremely dysfunctional HR/operations team. Managing people becomes a nightmare. You are not given the freedom to motivate your employees with decent pay rises, performance reviews that recognize their contributions (instead everyone must just “meet expectations” with the focus on how they could be better), or unpaid perks like additional holiday or condensed working. Instead you are told to reward them with more work and responsibility for no extra pay. The company leadership and HR seem to have been misled by American self-help books on how to manage people and not realized that European employees are not motivated by perpetual criticism to improve, and that ambitious hard-working employees want that work recognized and renumerated. When good people become demotivated and underperform or leave, people managers and team leads are punished even though they didn’t have the freedom to run their teams how they want to.
Arbeitsbedingungen
Some elements of the office are really nice. Great breakfasts and lunches, coffee, and snacks. Flexible desk policy has negatively impacted team morale. Teams cannot sit together and some days the office is rammed and it is impossible to find a desk and other days it is empty. There's not enough meeting rooms. Lots of people end up working from home because they don't want to turn up and hunt for a desk or wander to multiple booths looking for somewhere to meet. Despite the office being crowded there's no air purifiers so in winter people are sick all the time.
Kommunikation
Formal communication is good. Effort is made for employees to understand company goals. Day-to-day commuication is often poor. There is a lack of transparency for employees about how to meet vague performance targets. You are encouraged to make friends and connections between teams, but then regularly you’ll turn up to work to find people missing and their profiles deactivated. There’s a culture of silence around firings, which leads to paranoia and further demotivates employees.
Gleichberechtigung
Company claims it is interested in diversity but leadership seems very homogenous and the company has no diversity training. There do not appear to be many people from migration backgrounds in higher positions. Company social events are very focused around alcohol. There is no halal or kosher food. Networking opportunities for working parents are poor because all events are in the evening.
Interessante Aufgaben
I'm sure this varies between teams but there are always interesting tasks on offer. The probem is that taking on extra work on these side tasks is rarely recognized and rewarded, so eventually you stop engaging.