The fish rots from the head down.
Gut am Arbeitgeber finde ich
1) My amazing colleagues, who I was so lucky to meet through this job.
2) The opportunity to work in fintech and learn more about the industry.
Schlecht am Arbeitgeber finde ich
Everything else.
Arbeitsatmosphäre
As Britney Spears would say: TOXIC...
I'll preface this by saying that when I started, everything was great!
We had a fantastic team and a Lead who took great care of us. So thank you to my wonderful colleagues.
However, at some point, everything changed and upper management took over. From the on, it was all downhill.
I felt disrespected.
I felt constantly stressed.
I was micro-managed.
My skills and experience were called into question DAILY.
And this list could go on forever.
At some point, I started to question my own sanity.
My "Hot Take": If you only care about being right and pushing your opinion through, and not about employees or their work atmosphere, eventually you're going to end up with an empty office.
Kommunikation
When company strategy is either non-existent or changing every day, it's very hard to do "the right thing".
Communication between upper management and employees was intransparent and often conflicting.
Employees were expected to just know what to do, without any sort of company direction or clear focus. Feedback could change daily. One moment something was red, the next it was green. The day after that, we were back to red. Then everyone wondered why projects were moving so slowly and inefficiently.
Departments often didn't communicate with each other.
Crucial information slipped through the cracks.
Momentum was lost to miscommunication.
Lots of things had to be done last-minute because projects were not coordinated well across departments. This meant the quality of people's work suffered.
Kollegenzusammenhalt
"Nothing brings people closer together than shared suffering".
Work-Life-Balance
To be fair, I'm just a very stubborn person who refuses to do overtime because of someone else's bad time-management skills. So I always had a cut-off point where I said "good bye" and went home.
But, from what I observed, other employees and/or departments weren't so lucky.
It always felt like overtime was expected and a 100% commitment to the company above all else was encouraged.
We were also expected to come to the office. And if you did home office, that was very badly looked upon.
I just cannot comprehend how this mindset is still so prevalent in a world where other companies are going 100% remote, switching to a 4 day work week and then still beating all productivity records. If you don't trust us this much, why even hire us in the first place?
Vorgesetztenverhalten
Abominable.
Interessante Aufgaben
In the beginning, there were always cool campaigns to do and exciting tasks to explore. We had a lot of creative freedom up until the moment management changed.
Once that happened, creative freedom was quickly abolished and a new rule of terror began.
Gleichberechtigung
I didn't feel respected at all.
Umgang mit älteren Kollegen
We didn't really have any. Everyone was super young.
Arbeitsbedingungen
If a workplace is toxic through and through, no amount of fancy MacBooks or potted plants with cute name tags is going to fix that.
Umwelt-/Sozialbewusstsein
I personally didn't see us doing anything for sustainability.
Gehalt/Sozialleistungen
Just knowing how much other companies pay, I'm inclined to say: "Nope".
Image
For me personally, the gap between what I perceived as reality and what upper management thought was reality just became a chasm to Mordor at some point.
Karriere/Weiterbildung
It's hard to build a career in a company that doesn't seem to appreciate seniority or opinions contrary to that of management.
Arbeitgeber-Kommentar
Hi, thanks for sharing your experience with the public.
I'm sorry to hear you had a negative impression of our company. We're working everyday hard to be better, and this across the entire company. But those changes are not an overnight fix and may not be directly visible to everyone.
On your point on office presence, I'm sorry it was perceived that way. We have over 2/3 of our company that works fully remote, including in Germany. Besides, we encourage people to work as well from abroad a few times per year, particularly for employees whose families are far away from Berlin.
Again, we appreciate you taking the time to share your thoughts, and thank you for the time spend with us.