The fact that layoffs happened shortly before the holidays says enough. Startup with high ambitions but little strategy.
Gut am Arbeitgeber finde ich
Great colleagues, remote work, great founders.
Schlecht am Arbeitgeber finde ich
Lack of appreciation, image comes before people, high fluctuations, high customer churns, no product market fit
Verbesserungsvorschläge
Be transparent, fair and learn to appreciate those who carry most of the weight. Focus on the product and customer feedback instead of continuing this rapid growth.
Arbeitsatmosphäre
On a small scale the work environment is great but the higher up you go the less valued you are. Upper management does not show much appreciation for the employees.
Also everyone seems to have a side business, many of which are clashing with Xentral’s mission or even their own job description. To get the product where it needs to be, they need people who’s primary focus is Xentral.
Kommunikation
There is a lot of communication happening but after all not much is said. Weekly All-Hands Meetings don’t bring much value, core topics, such as the recent layoffs, are only communicated when it is already too late. There is communication but it is lacking transparency.
Kollegenzusammenhalt
Peer-to-Peer support is great!
Work-Life-Balance
They expect you to have the founder’s mindset so work-life-balance is very hard to handle. A lot of overtime for most people as workload is not manageable within normal working hours.
Arbeitsbedingungen
Equipment is great and provided by Xentral. Workload is barely manageable across all departments. Remote work is a great premise but many abuse the privilege.
Gehalt/Sozialleistungen
Salaries don’t match the workload.
Image
The image they present on the outside does not match the inside. The fact that there were layoffs just before Christmas, whilst we had a big company offsite just weeks before just shows that the image is more important than the actual people working there.
Karriere/Weiterbildung
Very few career development opportunities. Was used as a pitch in the interviews but once you are there you realize quickly that is was a false promise. They have improved since I started but there is still a long way to go.
Vorgesetztenverhalten
Interessante Aufgaben
Gleichberechtigung
Umgang mit älteren Kollegen
Umwelt-/Sozialbewusstsein
Arbeitgeber-Kommentar
Hi,
thank you for taking the time to give us such detailed feedback.
It is nice to read that you like your colleagues, our remote working culture and our founders!
However, it is also sad to read that your work life balance is suffering and you do not like the way we are communicating. Of course there might be times were the workload is quite high, but also the other way around.
A site comment: One of our values is having a coder´s mindset, not to be mixed up with founders mindset.
The fact that we had to let some employees go was a tough decision taken end of year (and not before, like you have assumed) and we are sorry for each of them. This step was needed in order to focus on our product and our customers even more and we are convinced that Xentral will be even more successful now. Timing is never great, but our founders explained the why very detailed to all involved persons.
Our founders also offered to jump on individual calls in case of questions about the current situation. So please feel free to reach out to them and also to your direct supervisor.
Best,
Sophia