Toxic workplace where the least qualified get to push around the few remaining good engineers
Schlecht am Arbeitgeber finde ich
Mynaric shows all signs of a failed workplace: people spend time gossiping in the coffee kitchens and in lengthy unproductive meetings. If you attempt to contribute your skills, you will not make friends as it is considered trespassing in some incompetent team leader's domain. Colleagues can hardly trust each other because there are plots everywhere, which even includes parts of the works council (may sound paranoid, but is the sad truth). Team leaders keep their underlings invisible and falsify facts when reporting to management. Money is thrown out the window e.g. due to incoherent project planning. The list goes on ...
Verbesserungsvorschläge
(this is more of a first-hand experience report)
If you try to raise common-sense points for improvement (such as that it is beneficial for all, if people roughly know what their teammates are working on), you are ignored.
If, for the sake of workplace sanity, you escalate matters, you become the mobbing target of mediocre mid-level managers (so-called "team leaders") whose power stems from keeping things as intransparent as possible.
HR, works council and management seem to have resigned from even trying to improve things, so that well-intended, constructive feedback eventually gets you fired.
Arbeitsatmosphäre
There is distrust in the air and the awareness of working towards an unknown or irrelevant goal is depressing.
Kommunikation
Blocking the free flow of information is the favorite way of team leaders to remain in power. Even after twelve months, I don't know what my direct peers are working on exactly, and calls for periodic team meetings are ignored.
Kollegenzusammenhalt
There are a few exceptions but in such a toxic environment, people generally only care about not getting themselves into trouble, which mostly is about pleasing their superiors. Interest in colleagues' lives more often is fake than it is not.
Work-Life-Balance
With the headcount available, everyone could work 3/4-day weeks, easily. But as incompetent leadership assigns useless or redundant tasks and then doesn't bother to collect / synchronize results, teams in panic mode are not uncommon.
Vorgesetztenverhalten
Leadership is top-down and arrogant, questions are not welcome, let go suggestions for improvement. Supervisors are scared of anything they don't understand or can't control. Personal integrity is missing.
Interessante Aufgaben
The expectation of interesting tasks is what drives most engineers to join Mynaric, but this is oftentimes followed by a rude awakening, after realizing that due to the processes / superiors that are in place, there is no chance to get anything interesting done.
Gleichberechtigung
No problem with that, but when comes to diversity, as one colleague put it, Mynaric is trying hard to settle on the least common denominator, picking the weaknesses of every culture ...
Umgang mit älteren Kollegen
The age group 35-65 is largely depleted. This may be related to occurrences such as the one where a newbie director with close to no relevant experience in the field tried to lecture a seasoned team leader on how things should be run (and then gave him "a chance to align" before having him removed).
Arbeitsbedingungen
The office space is modern in that it is open. While this can be positive for some departments, the resulting noise level is not acceptable for a number of tasks that require focus. Regrettably, although this point has been raised frequently, the issue will not be fixed in an upcoming move to new premises.
Umwelt-/Sozialbewusstsein
Military technology is en vogue these days, so I guess then it is a plus that the majority of contracts is for military applications.
Gehalt/Sozialleistungen
Before inflation struck, some salaries were competitive.
Image
Despite of all the spending on marketing, the public must start to realize that Mynaric has fallen behind the competition in terms of product innovation.
Karriere/Weiterbildung
Joining Mynaric is a career killer. Either you submit to their culture and become unemployable in decent companies, or you don't and then you will never get a promotion. In terms of learnings, nothing to write home about in my case.