Bad communication coupled with toxic management
Gut am Arbeitgeber finde ich
Unfortunately I find it very hard to write something positive here.
Schlecht am Arbeitgeber finde ich
It was frankly unbelieavable that alphin still kept contacting me months after asking for papers or favours after the disgraceful conduct towards me.
Verbesserungsvorschläge
- A complete overhaul of the communication and hire a conflict resolution specialist.
- Teach your workers how to handles stress
- Update your tech infrastructure, make the office work. Ordering HDMI cables is not a challenge
- Make it mandatory to learn about German law regarding media
- Keep expectations of customers in a realistic level
Arbeitsatmosphäre
At some point the company expanded and hired more people. There was a lot of excitement. After a few months all newly hired workers were let go (around 20). Why hire people and then fire them? Are you unable to calculate something as basic as this? The morale drop was huge..
Crowded teams can be loud and you will need to get used to that. Personally I love people laughing and enjoying themselves at work but it definitely effected my productivity when I was in office.
Me and my team received constant positive feedback as we were top performers. It was therefore interesting to watch the company claim a complete 180 within a few weeks which then finally got rescinded and ended up with admission of " betriebsbedingte kündigung".
Why such confusion ,chaos and waste of time? One can only speculate..
Kommunikation
Teams constantly shift blame on each other. Absurd requests are forwarded as if they are good ideas. FAQs are constantly left unread. Words such as "sorry" or "it was my mistake" are rarely heard. Anarchy is labeled as "flat hierarchy".
The company is clearly illiterate on media laws and it shows in the communication between customers and actual agencies. Many absurd and outlandish demands had to be tempered by my side.
Kollegenzusammenhalt
Stressy and at times very hostile. I am afraid this is not a simple case of "berliner schnauze". Some teams seem to be doing good while others are in complete civil war.
Some colleagues should consider themselves lucky to work in alphin because not many companies would tolerate this much of a hostile attitude.
Witnessed several cases where someone should have been given a warning because of their demeanor. That being said most of the TLs do a pretty solid job and are probably the lynchpins holding the company together. If it was up for me I would fire the top brass and promote these capable people instead.
Work-Life-Balance
If you dont go to holidays its all fine. Woe on to you if you leave for some days because your supervisor won't lift a finger even on the most important of matters.
It is a rare thing to witness batches of crucial handovers being ignored for weeks by superiors.
Vorgesetztenverhalten
Processes were altered arbitrarily even if it meant sabotaging outputs of entire teams. In my absence delicate tasks were left unattended. "Oh sorry, I was busy" was a catchphrase.
Interessante Aufgaben
Management was open to new ideas and I was allowed to implement them (as long as it didnt cost anything or the price was negligible)
Gleichberechtigung
"Werkstudenten" are seen as mules, I was horrified at one meeting how nonchalantly it was commented that the dreg of the work should be shifted on them. These kids join the company to learn something.
Female to male ratio was good and I wouldnt say that the company has a problem there.
Umgang mit älteren Kollegen
The old guard was doing fine and my communication with them was good. Company would definitely have benefited from older coworkers
Arbeitsbedingungen
Uninspiring. .HR seems to have given up providing any kind of support. No HDMI cables, no chargers, keyboards and mouses unavailable. It is pretty pathetic to go all the way to the office and to still have to work from your laptop. If something does not work, the Motto is "try it again". Laptops are old and slow. Definitely made working with large data difficult. Editing etc was done on my personal laptop with a program I paid from my own pocket because the company is apparently too poor for a adobe subscription.
A working infrastructure is always more important than pizza tuesdays
Umwelt-/Sozialbewusstsein
Paperless office is good
Gehalt/Sozialleistungen
Prepare to do double the work and still hear complaints. At some point nearly everyone in my team was let go. Once one of them returned as a mini job worker my supervisor had the nerve to complain that she was not working as efficient like a full time employee.
Bonuses non existent (to my knowledge or at least my line of work).
Instead you get bananas and müsli in the kitchen. Yeeeey(!)
Didnt see any benefits except for some stock option scheme by the end which I personally had no interest in. Shouldnt have been so difficult to pay at least our gym fees.
Image
Leadership seems to be aloof at the fact that quality comes with a price.
At some point workers were asked to rate the company 5 stars on google reviews. Lots of 1 review accounts rating 5 stars on googlemaps. The fake reviews on Kununu are glaringly obvious.
Karriere/Weiterbildung
A very small budget is given for you to use. I offered to use one account of online education to be shared within my team. The answer was something along the line that if we dont use it even for one month we must cancel the subscription because the "15€s are wasted and it hurts the company" (no joke, this was actually said).
I repeat 15€ shared among 3 people is a potential deadly waste for the company. I cant even write this with a straight face without laughing.