Internship and working student position: led to a heavy burnout, not recommended
Gut am Arbeitgeber finde ich
In the beginning, it was a pretty good and interesting experience with a lot of new tasks. I learned a lot and also earned trust within the department.
Schlecht am Arbeitgeber finde ich
I was working with an idea that in the future I would be able to get a good recommendation and then full-time position. So I worked hard and a lot. With time, I also started getting more responsibility and some tasks that were out of the scope of a regular working student job but as I said, I worked hard so I accepted the challenge. Moreover, I was eager to learn. It resulted of course in overworking hours which are unfortunately unpaid for working students but at least I could use them for my days off. The worst part started, however, when I noticed that I was excluded from team events and communication within a team. My boss also sometimes ignored that I had to study as well and had courses and lectures at the university. It felt like he expected me to work more than 20 hours per week.
After some time, I started getting even more tasks from different people and my responsibilities weren’t clearly defined. So every time when someone from the team had a problem, they came to me. I tried to talk to my boss about it but he wasn’t available. He didn’t have any time for me anymore and I was just left alone. I wasn’t invited to regular meetings with the team so I even didn’t have a chance to address my problems or discuss my accomplishments. Besides that, I experienced mobbing from one of my colleagues in the new team. This person obviously didn’t like me and tried to give me even more tasks and then micromanage them. This colleague wasn’t very good at their job and forgot to do some tasks very often or didn’t care about the deadlines so when something went wrong, this person always blamed me and tried to put me in an uncomfortable position in front of other people, although it wasn’t my fault. When I was on sick leave once, this person kept sending me messages and expected me to complete my tasks. Once I took days off, and after I came back, this colleague complained that I didn’t complete some tasks and nevertheless went on holiday, although this person was on holiday for almost three weeks before and just forgot to assign those tasks accordingly. I tried to talk to my boss but my complaints were ignored. Once he said that indeed, I didn’t have to work on all the topics I was getting from that colleague and they were not fairly disturbed within the team but then in two months he approached me with negative feedback also blaming me for taking days-off (!!) and asking for help when I was under water again with tons of tasks. I tried to explain to him many times how impossible it was to work with that new colleague who was not able to take responsibility and constantly blamed me for mistakes I didn’t make. Again, there was no time for me and ignoring. He was obviously not good at managing the team and probably not a very good leader because it felt like decided that people at the bottom of the professional hierarchy didn’t deserve his attention.
All in all, I got a heavy burnout and was prescribed to take medication and go through therapy. I am still going through this treatment, although I left the company.
Of course, these kinds of things can happen to anyone at any place but in case you’re working at Vitesco now and experiencing something similar, don’t be afraid to speak up and feel free to get support from HR.
If you’re considering taking a position in this company, I can tell you that it really depends on the team. You can be lucky and land in a good environment.