Toxic senior leadership - bad lay off strategy
Gut am Arbeitgeber finde ich
The commitment towards their customer and product.
Schlecht am Arbeitgeber finde ich
Really poor leadership skills.
I got really unlucky with senior leadership and who I had to report to.
My manager did not communicate the lay off to me directly, there was no message, no slack note, no thank you nor goodbye.This was the case for many others in the creative unit.
In their comments the people team is claiming that employees received above-average severance packages which simply isn't true, seeing how many people are taking legal actions and going to court to fight for exactly that.
Verbesserungsvorschläge
I do think Jimdo tries to care but in the end it's a corporate organization and what really matters is revenue over people. Since Jimdo grew too fast twice now, senior leadership needs to reconsider whether Jimdo really can be the agile and fast paced company they are claiming and wanting to be. Currently it looks like whenever they try, they fail.
Arbeitsatmosphäre
The hire and fire mentality resulted in people being scared for their jobs. Interesting that hardly anyone from senior leadership had to go.
Getting consultants to do the pushing and execution of ideas that have been previously developed in-house, pitched and rejected by senior leadership, has been frustrating. Often these consultants then leave after a couple of months with no effect on KPIs and numbers.
Kommunikation
Jimdo's senior leadership is claiming transparency but the lay offs in summer showed they don't act up on it. There hasn't been 1o1 conversations between managers and their direct reports, email and slack accounts being deactivated within minutes, leaving 20+ people with no opportunity to say Goodbye to their colleagues. No appreciation for a lot of long term employees and their hard work. It was humiliating really. Looking at other companies that dealt with the same situation, Jimdo really didn't do a good job.
Kollegenzusammenhalt
Jimdoers are lovely, kind and talented people. If it wasn't for the leadership team and their decisions on how to act in tough times I would probably still recommend this company.
Work-Life-Balance
Since remote work was introduced the quality of work life balance increased. You will get late night slack messages or requests especially from American colleagues, but it's really up to you to be strict in these cases and take care of yourself and after work hours.
Vorgesetztenverhalten
Toxic. On the contrary to what the people team is claiming in their comments - there was no real senior leadership feedback process - with the frequent changes in reporting structures (at least every quarter), having a 360 feedback once a year doesn't really do the job. You have to push yourself and give feedback anytime you can, a thought through process doesn't exist. There is the classic top down feedback during performance reviews. 1o1s often got canceled due to overbooked meeting slots. If your manager was in the US you frequently have to make yourself available late in the evenings (European time).
Many times no goals were set within smaller teams, strategies and tactics that have been development by direct reports later were sold as the accomplishment of senior leadership or consultants.
Interessante Aufgaben
Most projects felt very rushed, a million different micro goals, OKRs changing and tactics being put on hold with a lot of resources and time already invested towards them. Hardly any celebration of the things that went well in our unit.
Gleichberechtigung
Although there is no woman in actual C level they are trying to give DEI some attention. Not sure about the pay gap, I think they used a service to minimize the pay gap between men and women which really is the least you have to do as a company nowadays.
Umgang mit älteren Kollegen
There are not really any "older / 50+" colleagues at Jimdo to my knowledge. Before the lay offs many employees have been with the company for several years, though.
Arbeitsbedingungen
Remote work and nice office in Hamburg, you can choose your devices
Umwelt-/Sozialbewusstsein
This doesn't really get any attention or space within the company.
Gehalt/Sozialleistungen
Jimdo tries to pay market average but it really depends on your manager and therefore feels arbitrarily - no process of monitoring in place. With some managers you will have issues getting salary increases, others will be more fair in terms of performance and coherent compensation increases.
Image
Used to be good, now probably got a few cracks. There is not much of an employer branding. The culture changed a few years ago towards the "Netflix" approach - doesn't seem to work in Jimdo's case as many feel stressed and overwhelmed. Or do the wrong talents get hired? In that case here's you first problem to fix.
Karriere/Weiterbildung
Internal promotions happen sometimes but more often external interim leaders will be brought in that sometimes do a great job and others that just rip apart units and don't get much done. In the end Jimdo always pays a lot of money for consultants to be onboarded and then leave again with hardly any effect on overall company performance.