Can be fun for a few months, but don't expect to have a steady job for 1+ year (event when you perform well)
Gut am Arbeitgeber finde ich
- the individuals who joined Meister before all the layoffs started
- the salary is generally good or very good (not for people who joined before the investment)
- the office is beautiful and has everything you need or could possibly dream of
- cool product
Schlecht am Arbeitgeber finde ich
- constant layoffs and a lack of accountability on a senior management level
- having let Meister turn into a company where people are afraid to speak up
- allowing corporate politics where individuals who kiss up to their superiors get better opportunities
- constant change of strategy and tactics = projects are stopped in the middle or close before the finish line. This way, nothing much ever gets done.
- pretending that constant layoffs are normal - do you really think anybody buys this?
- very high fluctuation
- micromanagement
Verbesserungsvorschläge
- develop a clear strategy and stick to it for longer than 2 months
- stop telling people that there will be no more layoffs when they happen more or less on a monthly basis
- start taking accountability for mistakes that happened at the top level instead of making individual team members pay for them
- stop playing politics and giving more opportunities to team members and lower management who kiss up to their seniors
- be transparent in job interviews that it could be a fun, exciting and well-paid gig, but that chances are that it will last one year maximum no matter how well you perform or how hard you work - then people can make an informed decision whether this is what they want for themselves at this stage of their lives
Arbeitsatmosphäre
It has been fun for a long time. The team sticks together, the office is beautiful and Meister organizes fun events.
The atmosphere has deteriorated since layoffs started in 2022. Now, there have been so many waves of "restructuring", "rightsizing" etc. and regular (about monthly) terminations that people either leave on their own terms, people have become numb and disassociate or they keep their heads down because they fear that they will be next. There are now more cases of diagnosed or suspected burn-out.
To add a bit more context to the layoffs: I believe no department has been spared so far and in almost all cases, layoffs were not performance-oriented (people with the highest sales numbers and the best performance evaluations were also laid off).
Kommunikation
Meister has a high number of individuals with excellent communication skills. However, this is no longer seen as important for leadership positions as it used to be (e.g., verbal aggression from high-level executives to lower management, a high-level executive calling mental health "the responsibility of individuals" rather than the company during mental health awareness month, HR denying that there would be more layoffs when lower management asked for help on dealing with the anxiety in their departments and teams etc.). I want to be clear that in comparison to other companies, Meister at least communicates and often does so well. However, it seems that this is no longer deemed essential, which leads me to assume that things will go downhill.
Kollegenzusammenhalt
What makes Meister a great company are the individual team members. For a long time, people were hired not only for their skills and experience, but also for cultural fit and that paid of. It's easy to get along with your colleagues, they are smart, fun and usually really kind people.
Work-Life-Balance
It really depends. There are people with weeks of overtime and others work exactly their contractual 38.5 hours per week. Meister is at least sticking to the law and you can use the hours you've built up as overtime, also entire days or weeks.
Vorgesetztenverhalten
For the longest time, Meister has been struggling to define where they want to go, which go-to-market strategy to follow and which target groups to address. This has led to a constant flip-flopping from one approach to another leading to many cancelled projects just before the finish line, high opportunity costs and frustration among the team. In combination with micro-management from top-level executives, this is a difficult situation to be in.
The lack of a strategy has been pointed out numerous times, but was never taken seriously. Instead, external consultants have been brought on. Their opinion was valued a lot higher than the opinion of entire teams of seniors. Meister now prefers to hire individuals from other SaaS companies in the productivity and collaboration space that come with "a playbook". It seems to me that the assumption is that just because the person worked at the competition, they automatically know more than any other person at Meister (no matter their seniority or experience) and that whatever was done at a competitor's, can be easily implemented at Meister and will automatically work. Obviously, this hasn't worked.
Interessante Aufgaben
The work can be very exciting as the individuals you work with are very talented. What's less exciting is the constant stop-and-go motion due to frequent strategy changes, micromanagement or general fatigue after another round of layoffs.
Gleichberechtigung
Of course it's still better to be a white male like in almost every (SaaS) company, but in terms of skin color, origin and religious beliefs, my impression is that people are treated equally and fair. However, when you look at how many women are in senior leadership positions or how many people of color there are, well... It's still a SaaS company.
Umgang mit älteren Kollegen
There used to be team members above in their early 50s, but apart from that, there aren't any anymore. While they worked at Meister, my impression was that they were never treated differently in the sense of worse because of their age. However, not enough thought was given to them during the layoffs and that it might be harder for them to find new jobs. BTW this was also an issue for some people who moved to Austria to work at Meister.
Arbeitsbedingungen
The office is really beautiful and located right on Vienna's busiest shopping street. This means that their are ample opportunities for grabbing lunch or coffee. The garden is also really beautiful.
I like that there are these nooks you can use when the open-plan office is too loud.
Umwelt-/Sozialbewusstsein
See my comment about how elder team members and some people without an Austrian passport were treated during layoffs.
Gehalt/Sozialleistungen
Meister pays (quite) well and I assume it will have to continue to do so because people don't come for the culture anymore. However, there has been an ongoing rumour that people who started before the investment still earn significantly less than their peers who joined after.
In terms of salary increases due to the collective agreement, Meister has not communicated as regularly and as clearly as me and several colleagues hoped for based on Meister’s general goal of transparency, so this feels a bit... unexpected?
Image
It depends on who you ask. I'd say that within the Austrian start-up bubble, Meister has a good reputation because the company did a lot of things well for a long time. Outside of this bubble, nobody knows Meister, so there's no good or bad image.
Karriere/Weiterbildung
There is 10% time, but this is handled very differently in each team. Some may use it fully, others will not have time for it at all. In my case, I unfortunately never got to use it.