Chaotic and fake environment
Gut am Arbeitgeber finde ich
Good working environment, excellent tools, extensive flexibility, and competitive salary.
Schlecht am Arbeitgeber finde ich
Poor recruitment practices, non-technical management, excessive politics, lack of transparency, and failure to recognize and promote impactful and knowledgeable individuals.
Verbesserungsvorschläge
- Improve the hiring process to prevent multiple instances of hiring the wrong people for the same team, involve the team in recruitment to ensure better fit before new leads conduct interviews.
- Acknowledge that hands-on technical proficiency is irreplaceable; communicators without coding knowledge cannot substitute technical expertise.
- Recruit technical managers capable of effectively fostering their career growth.
Arbeitsatmosphäre
Office is nice, people are nice, but talented and competent people are more and more rare. If you like working in a place with talented and inspiring people that's definitely not the place!
Kommunikation
The company has a very corporate culture, where everything is political. Communication from managers often feels insincere, with a lack of direct and honest feedback. There is no transparency regarding decisions, and team changes are poorly communicated.
Employees are frequently moved in and out of teams without proper communication. Engineers are hesitant to provide honest feedback to upper management because their career progression is entirely dependent on their direct manager.
Kollegenzusammenhalt
Teamwork and cohesion used to be my favorite aspects of working at Personio. Unfortunately, due to poor hiring, layoffs and incompetent management, the team has deteriorated, leading to the departure of many team members.
Numerous team members resigned after the layoffs due to several factors: lack of recognition for their work, limited career growth opportunities, frustration with onboarding incompetent hires, declining quality of the product, and a generally negative atmosphere.
Work-Life-Balance
The company offers exceptional flexibility. You can enjoy flexible working hours, work from home 100%, and work from anywhere. It's the most flexible company I've worked for!
Vorgesetztenverhalten
As an engineer, your career growth is entirely dependent on your direct manager. I've had five managers since joining (after moving teams three times), and none of them were technically proficient enough to understand the complexity of our work, yet they were responsible for evaluating engineers performance.
Interessante Aufgaben
The projects can be interesting, but it highly depends on the team you join.
If you are an engineer passionate about coding avoid this company !!! You might end up being invisible due to communication being valued more than actual work. To be noticed in this company, you need to engage in office politics. Being visible seems to matter more than being impactful.
Also, onboarding of new hires is one of the biggest tasks you will have to contribute to, which might result in spending a lot of time explaining basic concepts to some people who earn twice your salary.
example: I had to teach a lead frontend engineer - in the company since a year already - how to revert changes in a git commit and basic JavaScript methods, typically covered in the first lesson of JavaScript.
Some metrics: Over the last 2 years at Personio, 11 senior engineers and above joined my team. Out of these, 5 could not code a single line nor understand the code from reading it, 3 were asked to leave before the end of their probation or were let go, 4 were competent but left the company or the team quickly, and only 1 competent engineer remains in the team.
Gleichberechtigung
In my team, there appears to be a significant disparity in how experience is valued based on gender.
For example, a woman with over 10 years of experience and a previous role as a Staff engineer in a similar company was hired at the Senior L5 level. Conversely, a man with only 5 years of experience, who has solely worked as a Senior, was also hired at the Senior L5 level.
Furthermore, currently all employees below the L5 level in my team are women, while all employees at L5 and above are men, similar for all teams in my tribe.
This situation suggests that women may have to work at least twice as hard as men to achieve the same level.
Umgang mit älteren Kollegen
The company does have a mix of generations, but it appears that colleagues who have been with the company the longest have been laid off this year.
Arbeitsbedingungen
Nice office, best laptop, food at the office, flexibility to work from home or remote - perfect.
Gehalt/Sozialleistungen
Salaries are good for the amount of work required. The typical working hours observed are from 10am to 6pm, which is much more relaxed compared to other companies that usually work from 8am to 6pm. It's very chill. However, as mentioned previously, there seems to be a disparity based on gender, and you cannot rely on promotions.
Image
Engineers do not have a good image of Personio and do not propagate a positive image of the company. The company culture has shifted significantly from a German startup to an American corporate style, which has left many people disappointed.
The fact that Personio is currently operating without a CTO further shows how little importance is placed on engineering.
Karriere/Weiterbildung
There is no possibility for career advancement. You will remain in the position you were hired for, so if you're not happy with it, don't sign. Management will continuously give reasons why it's not possible for you to advance at this time and promise it will happen next time. It's all just politics; there is no real evolution or learning opportunities anymore.