Modern company with advantages, but also rough corners
Arbeitsatmosphäre
The company laid-off a good portion of its staff in mid 2022, which also happened to other tech companies like Bitpanda, Go Student etc. I guess this happens when there is an imbalance between investor expectations, (unrealistic) growth plans, weak leadership etc. - I was not part of the leadership, but in all of those cases you hear about the very same issues. That's important because all this causes pressure amongst the crew and people feel less safe, at least the ones that I have talked to. Regardless of this weight and new reality at Meister, the company tries its best to create a good workplace. There are super flexible working times, you can blance full (!) days when you have 8+ overhours, you get good equipment and also people are very nice.
Kommunikation
Meister works a lot on communication and expects clear and structured communication from you. They have a pretty well developed 360 degree feedback and (re-) evaluation system, supported by formalized checklists that make decisions more objective ideally. On the company side we missed clear communication sometimes. Lots of people missed a clear company strategy by the management for instance. Also just recently (after more than 15 years) Meister forced ways of brutally honest feedback e.g. to the management, which unveiled issues that the majority was partly not aware of. I've seen much younger companies who took whole campany-wide workshops with external experts, only to deal with the problem of being hesitant to speak openly about anything. Don't get me wrong, Meister is open for your opinion, but as a company you have to be active in requesting honest opinions and not passive. This is about to change right now I think
Kollegenzusammenhalt
Quite good, as in most companies
Work-Life-Balance
Really depends! For most people it's good. There are flexible working times and home office is not an issue, also full remote is possible. You can balance full days when you have 8+ overhours. Technically there are no overhours actually, but "more hours". The difference is that real over hours are balanced by 1:1,5 and more hours by 1:1 (only). But still I loved the system, since you can take off a day from time to time. Still there are some employees who have so many tasks that they have dozens of over hours and no time to take off, but I'd say that's just the exception to the rule
Vorgesetztenverhalten
Also depends. Everyone is super nice, but I had a bad experience with a very unexperienced leader in the specific field. That was hard, but the time before that was nice and I think overall it's ok in all other departments. I just heard from a friend in another dev team that his lead is super nice, but still too "soft" and finds it hard to make fast and clear decisions
Gehalt/Sozialleistungen
Meister improved the salaries a bit this year, especially after the lay-offs. But you have to be clear that other companies pay way better mostly. A friend of mine left the company this year and gets more as an intermediate than many of the seniors at Meister. I've heard from a few seniors, that they had counter offers with 15-20k more a year when they joined Meister. So you see, money is not everything :)
Still I have to mention that Meister pays for your public transport in Vienna or they pay the equivalent amount to the austrian railway card.
Image
Not very clear to me. Vision and reality is not the same
Karriere/Weiterbildung
Very professional. They are clear career paths - even for people who do not want to lead other people, there are very nice opportunities. They put some thought into this. You can also do a lot of trainings and they pay for german classes and even personal coachings. Leaders get regular trainings as well. Theoretically you can spend 10% of your work time with trainings, BUT I haven't seen anyone who ever had the time to actually do that