Coworkers and Culture were great, the rest just so-so
Arbeitsatmosphäre
I wouldn't say it was "toxic" but there were definitely a lot of times where I was left feeling frustrated by management. It was not uncommon that our team would get a call to drop everything and fix/work on something else. Even if we weren't the cause, we felt like it was somehow our fault. I don't often remember times when we felt appreciated for doing a good job. Cutting costs or optimizing our services was met with a "nice job" but then it was just onto the next ticket. I often doubted myself and was never sure if I was on the chopping block or if they were truly satisfied with my work.
Kommunikation
The company slack is full of conversation and gives remote workers the feeling that they aren't truly alone out there. There are plenty of channels for work-related processes, as well as fun ones and if you post in the wrong channel then someone will usually point you in the right direction. Near the end of my time, however, there was a push to reorganize everything and it made communication between teams suffer. Often, our department had little to no idea what other departments were doing, which sometimes led to processes or services breaking and us scrambling to fix them.
Kollegenzusammenhalt
Coworkers were definitely one of the things I liked most about this job. The company has a wonderful culture and it was very easy for me to fit in. Coworkers are friendly and open to help you work through a problem, if they have the time. There are a lot of talented, hard-working people here and you can learn a lot by working with them.
Work-Life-Balance
For our department, there was regular on-call rotations and that definitely caused some friction in our evenings and sleep schedules. Being woken up between 2-4am was a regular occurrence for us and even when not on-call, there were situations where we would work late evenings or even a few hours on the weekends. There was additional compensation for on-call, but IMO was not enough to offset the major inconveniences that it caused
Interessante Aufgaben
For our department, we could adjust our tech stack and weren't locked to anything specific. There wasn't any ancient legacy code that we weren't allowed to touch, and if we had enough time between sprints, we could make major changes to our services and processes. Implementing new software was also a possibility. Most of these decisions fell to more senior teammates, however, and they needed to first be convinced before any change could happen.
Gleichberechtigung
It's a modern company, so this was something that's also done well. The company is very international and has a good mix of male and female coworkers, as well as being LGBT friendly. I never got the impression that gender/race/sexual orientation put anyone at a disadvantage
Arbeitsbedingungen
Köln office is very modern (was recently remodeled), and made coming into work something I looked forward to. Employees are also offered full home-office setups including desk, monitor, usb hub, and modern laptops. Coffee machines, sparkling water, and fridges stocked with drinks are also available in the office.
Gehalt/Sozialleistungen
Below average, from what I've seen. It's not common to see raises being given out, and the promotion process only happens once a year. If you do get a promotion/raise, there is no negotiation. You simply get what they give you. No Christmas/13th Month bonuses either.
Image
Not good, not bad. Since KEC has little/nothing to do with the physical stores, it's fairly unknown. At least in my personal circles, most people had never been on the Kaufland website or realized that they sold more than just what you can find in the stores. I will say that most employees generally enjoy working there and complain at a normal amount.
Karriere/Weiterbildung
In my time here, there were more than a few managers for our team. My first manager gave me the impression that he cared about my growth and development. I felt that once Schwarz took over, this became less important. It became less of a focus on how we could grow and set goals for ourselves and shifted more to how we could cut costs and streamline our services.