Disheartening Experience: Misled and Excluded
Gut am Arbeitgeber finde ich
- Opportunity to work with innovative technologies.
- Exposure to LLMs, full stack engineering, and cloud solutions.
- Hands-on experience with some of the hottest trends in tech.
Schlecht am Arbeitgeber finde ich
I was working as a ML Full Stack Engineer within a newly formed unit called MIGROS AI Foundation. My experience was horrible due to significant miscommunication and unrealistic expectations. During the hiring process, all four of my job interviews where conducted in English, and I was promised that my work would be in English with only occasional use of German if I eventually had to communicate with someone outside my team. My German skills are B1, with a clearly communicated inability to speak fluently or understand complex discussions. However, after I joined the team, they decided that every single team meeting would be conducted in German from day one, creating a completely exclusionary atmosphere and unrealistic language proficiency expectations.
I was expected to rapidly advance my German from conversational to business level within three months while also onboarding to a complex tech architecture and delivering value. I was still able to onboard myself with minimal assistance and deliver value, pushing code to production since week two. Despite making substantial progress and delivering adequate performance, I felt completely excluded and unsupported, even when I clearly communicated the challenges I was facing.
Additionally, my team worked remotely while I was forced to be on-premises, further isolating me as daily meetings were my only interaction with them (in a language I don't speak). In this homogeneous and uninspiring environment, the only diversity was that a few people are from Germany instead of Switzerland.
Ultimately, this environment hindered my personal and professional growth, leaving me feeling disconnected and undervalued. I was amazed by how such a negative environment can affect even someone with a strong personality like myself, who is usually never affected emotionally by external factors. The unrealistic language expectations and lack of support negatively impacted my mental well-being and professional development. Despite my efforts and contributions, I was laid off at the end of the second month without prior negative feedback, citing language barriers as the reason, which is essentially their mistake.
Verbesserungsvorschläge
Clear Communication of Job Requirements
Realistic Onboarding Expectations
Promote Diversity and Inclusion: foster an inclusive work environment by supporting hybrid language use and valuing diverse backgrounds and perspectives.
Feedback and Accountability: Be open to receiving feedback and regularly assess management skills to ensure effective and supportive leadership.
Vorgesetztenverhalten
My supervisor was lacking basic people and management skills.
Gleichberechtigung
The department I was in had a 9:1 gender ratio
Arbeitsatmosphäre
Kommunikation
Kollegenzusammenhalt
Work-Life-Balance
Interessante Aufgaben
Umgang mit älteren Kollegen
Arbeitsbedingungen
Umwelt-/Sozialbewusstsein
Gehalt/Sozialleistungen
Image
Karriere/Weiterbildung
Arbeitgeber-Kommentar
Thank you very much for taking the time to evaluate the Migros-Genossenschafts-Bund as an employer in such detail and for your numerous suggestions for improvement. Constructive feedback like yours helps us to improve the working conditions for our employees.
I am very sorry that you are not satisfied with the working conditions in your area. In particular, you rated the communication of job requirements, expectations, the working atmosphere in the team and the feedback culture as inadequate. You are slightly more positive about the innovative technologies, the various insights and trends, which we are very pleased about.
It would be helpful for us if you could give me more information about your experiences and your suggestions for improvement by e-mail (robin.maurer@mgb.ch) or telephone (+41 58 570 04 48). That way we can discuss suitable solutions to improve the situation.
Many thanks for your help and best regards
Robin Maurer