Upvest 

GmbH

Vorstellungsgespräche

Verbesserungsvorschläge

While the time and information provided are sufficient, the process can be very long and rather work intensive.

But there are essentially 3 things I would like to talk about so you do not get into the process without a warning/full information.

1. Upvest is a start-up. They expect fast and high quality work in a very small time window. If you are not the 1% of the upper 1% that can create a fully reviewed 99% watertight requirements document with close to 0 errors in one 40 hour week, then you might need to think longer about working there.
Based on the marketing and info available, 40h/week is the target, but at the rapid speed everything and everybody is moving at Upvest, it is highly unlikely that the expected amount of work can be done within the normal 40h weekly allotment. This may be especially relevant for more experienced applicants who already had their share of 70h weeks in the past and don't want to repeat this ad infinitum.

2. As you know, as an investor financed start-up, Upvest cannot pay the same salaries as established companies for the same skillset/experience. They try to make up for that in virtual shares as part of the salary. That means you will get part of your salary in virtual shares based on the most recent company valuation. For example, if you target 120k/year total, you may get an offer for 90k fixed salary and 30k/year in virtual shares (based on the valuation of the company at this time). The reasoning here is to accumulate these shares, hope and work for an increase in the companies valuation and after Upvests IPO you could sell the shares for a nice ROI on your shares. BUT, there is a catch. Based on the information provided during the interview, the money-equivalent that is stored in these shares is not yours immediately. If you leave Upvest in under 12 month this money is forfeit, its lost. After 1 year you get 25% of the virtual share part of your salary, after 2 years, 50%, 3 years, 75% and 4 years 100%. This is of course an incentive to stay at least 4 years and ROI on the possible IPO to get your labor cheaper. BUT if you are unsure if this company is for you and it may happen that you want to leave before the 4 years are up, this is something to take into account.

3. What, in my opinion, is HIGHLY questionable is the case study you are requested to prepare. It seems that Upvest uses this case to get the applicants to do actual work for them. They ask for Information and ideas how you would structure/create/solve xyz, while these challenges still exist for Upvest in production. That means they use your application to get information, expert knowledge you may have, ideas, frameworks etc. how they can actually solve real life problems on their end. That is free labor and you don't even know if you will get the job or not. I suggest if you do this, keep it vague, create something high level with a storyline you can add verbally in the interview as additional explanation. Providing written solutions to actual problems Upvest faces is free labor for an uncertain outcome. Protect yourself and your knowledge.

These are just a few items I wanted to share. While 1 and 2 are just choices everybody needs to decide for themselves, point 3 is something that i find highly questionable and even unethical and I would ask Upvest to stop this practice.