Everything you heard about N26 leadership and strategy is absolutely true, but the people and product are great
Gut am Arbeitgeber finde ich
Work Culture & Community: Strong sense of camaraderie in select product, design, and engineering teams, alongside highly valued Employee Resource Groups (ERGs) promoting inclusivity.
Product & Work Environment: A surprisingly solid end product, good office facilities (Berlin), standard work-life balance flexibility, and acceptable base compensation.
Schlecht am Arbeitgeber finde ich
Leadership & Strategy: Chaotic, out-of-touch leadership with constantly shifting short-term priorities, top-down half-baked ideas, and a lack of consistent long-term vision.
Toxic Governance & Office Politics: Rampant backstabbing, political power struggles across C-suite/VP/Director levels, constant squabbling between Management, HR, and the Workers Council, and treating employees as disposable.
Flawed Performance Management: Inconsistent, easily manipulated review systems that reward mid-to-poor performers while failing to recognize top talent with meaningful promotions or pay increases.
Verbesserungsvorschläge
Overhaul Executive & Middle-Management Leadership: Eliminate toxic, power-seeking behaviors at the C-suite, VP, and Director levels. Leadership must lead with self-awareness, cross-functional synergy, and accountability rather than political gamesmanship.
Establish a Stable, Long-Term Strategy: Stop shifting corporate and product direction every quarter. Commit to a clear, data-informed roadmap that lets teams finish high-value projects without sudden, unjustified top-down deprioritization.
Fix Performance & Promotion Systems: Build transparent, objective performance criteria that reward genuine impact and talent rather than political maneuvering or changing internal narratives.
Arbeitsatmosphäre
Management, HR and the Workers Council are constantly squabbling. Management’s sole focus is self-sustainability while employees are treated as disposable goods. This is fine but it’s unacceptable if they expect everyone to work like they’re at Apple and let’s be honest N26 isn’t. Mid and poor performance is rewarded while great performance goes unrewarded.
Kommunikation
Gossip ran rampant and management, at least until the recent shake-ups, communicated without self-awareness. The HR team was a lackey executing bizarre decisions while priorities shifted with laughable or non-existent justifications.
Kollegenzusammenhalt
There is a sense of comradery in specific product, design and engineering segments. Unfortunately, the sense of collegiality is lost if segment leads are toxic, incompetent and care only about their own spotlight.
Work-Life-Balance
Very possible if one's capable of shutting off the noise.
Vorgesetztenverhalten
I’ve never worked for a company with such chaotic, non-synergistic, focus-lacking and out-of-touch leadership. It’s incredible the product is as good as it is given the lack of product strategy. The company strategy shifts every three months and projects are accelerated and then dropped even faster. It’s like Game of Thrones meets The Office and it’s not even entertaining. The only funny thing is seeing certain managers and leads breaking their backs to acquire power and stabbing everyone in the back, only to get stabbed themselves as well - there's some fairness in the world!
Interessante Aufgaben
There's a lot of great features and projects that teams COULD be working on (or they start working on), only for them to get deprioritised by the lastest top-down half-baked ideas .
Gleichberechtigung
ERGs are great and one of the real highlights in the company - people who are organising initiatives and promoting serious talk and values are amazing. It's not properly reflected in the top management, but at least there's a queer, POC and female leader here and there.
Arbeitsbedingungen
The Berlin office is good, and there's home office/remote flexibility (albeit that can change on a whim depending on who's pulling the current leadership strings).
Umwelt-/Sozialbewusstsein
Could be worse, could be better.
Gehalt/Benefits
Not the worst salaries out there, but performance and promotion-based increases are incredibly low.
Image
Good product, good colleagues, bad company. All the stories you hear are absolutely true.
Karriere/Weiterbildung
Performance and development expectations, and performance reviews are ever changing, inconsistent, easy to manipulate and fit whatever storyline is needed at the moment.