Huge disappointment
Gut am Arbeitgeber finde ich
Amazing colleagues within the team.
Schlecht am Arbeitgeber finde ich
- Lack of communication
- Consulting-driven corporate company, which wants to seem like an agile SaaS company on the outside
- Unsustainable hypergrowth
- Lack of appreciation for employees
- Using lots of externals / agencies rather than building knowledge within the company
- Decisions are not made, and if so, it's generally the wrong ones
- Generally no budget for investing in employees
Verbesserungsvorschläge
Please be honest about mistakes that were made in the past and don't try to be all positive and optimistic about the future, even though it isn't in the current regulatory landscape. This toxic positivity is very tiresome and not needed, instead being truthful and communicate issues earlier to all colleagues would be much appreciated. Try to start to increase motivation by implementing fundamentals, such as regular check-ins and potential career paths for each team. Stop firefighting on the outside and start investing in employees, they are the biggest and most important asset.
Arbeitsatmosphäre
VERSO is a fully remote company with offices in Munich, Hamburg and Cologne. This being a clear benefit regarding flexibility and work-life balance, it is also come with a challenge as all decisions and important meetings are done online. If communication would have been better across the company in general, as well as the push for a more frequent personal exchange of teams, the fatigue of being in front of a screen all day from home could have been reduced. One off-site a year is not enough and the company should invest in individual teams to enable them to see each other on a more regular basis. Unfortunately, the priorities seem to be elsewhere.
Image
VERSO invests heavily in a good image on social media, via webinars or fairs on sustainability. However, knowing that C-Level members regularly fly between the offices, saying that you are a sustainable company is just a huge hypocrisy. Sustainability might be written on the website - but is far away from being lived as a fundamental value by the company. It all seemed rather shallow and what I missed is true integrity and a backbone within the company - if that would have been the case, the image on the outside could be way more authentic.
Work-Life-Balance
Flexible hours and home-office.
Karriere/Weiterbildung
Main motivation killer. During the time I worked at VERSO, I didn't have a single, regularly-scheduled meeting about my further development and potential career paths for me. Most the time, I had to push for these meetings, also when it came to salary negotiations. This was very tiresome on my end but also unprofessional from the company as this a basic prerequisite of any work environment and should be part of the process. Not knowing how I can develop professionally and the feeling of hanging 'loose' in the air was quite difficult. It killed my motivation for the job and the company.
Gehalt/Benefits
Fair salary on my end but not across teams. From colleagues I heard many times that salaries are not fair within teams and junior colleagues got sometimes a higher pay than their senior peers. It seemed very arbitrary and just based on how well you negotiated initially.
Kollegenzusammenhalt
Collleagues within the team are simply amazing and you get a lot of support. The instant you need to work cross-functional it gets more complicated. Everything needs to be documented, otherwise certain decisions are being held against you months later down the line. Therefore, trust across teams was hard to build and many times it lead to more disappointments and anger rather than the feeling that you can be honest with each other and work towards a common goal. I think the main issue was that the overall strategy and vision of the company was not quite clear and therefore teams were working in silos and trying to survive in a smaller unit, doing their own thing - As the bigger picture and anchor was not visible. Quite sad to see, as the potential to thrive as "one" was definitely there.
Vorgesetztenverhalten
Disaster. Not so much the middle management, they still try to foster a good work environment and push requests / responsibility to the upper management and "fight" for their team members. But as said above, once the requests are handed in, nothing really happens. So unfortunately, many times the hands of the team leads are tied and they can't do much due to the high dependencies to the C-Level, even when it comes to the smallest decisions. This is a systemic issue of the company and I don't think this will ever change. In addition, people that are critical and raise concerns are not welcome as there is the culture of "toxic positivity" in the upper management team. Keeping your head down and don't be too outspoken was generally the behaviour that was rewarded in the long-run.
Kommunikation
Catastrophic. It doesn't matter whether it is about the planning of an off-site, any requests regarding further training or performance reviews - once a request, even the smallest one, is made it just lands on the desk of the C-Level and stays there, technically ignored for months. Company-wide decisions are generally not communicated and if so, last-minute. You really don't feel as a part of the company, just a number, even though it is supposed to be a small and agile SaaS scale-up. In a nutshell, the company acts like a big corporation, very political, consulting-driven and with a top-down approach - very frustrating in the long run, this behavior is a true motivation killer.
Interessante Aufgaben
Initially lot of responsibility, you could really build products and ideas from scratch and develop them with the team, which was fun. But further down the line, it got harder and harder to really make a meaningful impact as decisions were simply not made and the overall goal of the company was not clear anymore.