Innovation Think Tank Team is unfortunately disappointing
Gut am Arbeitgeber finde ich
I am still glad to have had my internship there because learning corporate working is a big skill for my career. The job has taught me professionalism. And although the over-expectations from interns are a disadvantage, we were actually our own project managers and learned a lot because of this pressure. We were also mostly valued for our educational backgrounds, so the new projects we found were appreciated.
Schlecht am Arbeitgeber finde ich
Innovation starts from within but this ITT team has little to do with it. We were forced to work on a hospital model for months one after another - literally forced because it had nothing to do with our backgrounds so all of us asked to change this project but they made us work on it anyway. The model had carpentry and hard work (with minimum work safety) and it was far far away from technology. The budget saved for this model was ridiculously high, and we only did it because the founder of ITT told everyone so. Working in this team felt like an act of manager-pleasing and everyone was craving for this manager's validation.
Verbesserungsvorschläge
Innovation Think Tank has a very outdated, hierarchical, and inefficient working culture. The title differences are horrible, the number of interns is a bit too many, and yet the interns are not taken seriously even though they are the driving force in that team. The managers know how to sell and market the team, hence only from inside it is seen how rotted their system is. I wish they had taken a good team management course or changed the majority of leaders because the current situation is more like people bossing around and commanding each other.
Arbeitsatmosphäre
Open office, nice facilities. It is a bit crowded and loud when everyone has meetings, but hybrid working made it go smoothly.
Kommunikation
There is absolutely no upward communication between levels, only downwards. There is a big hierarchy, and the lower steps are seen only as a task force. Everyone has a "more important" manager than them and it is so tense that even the working students are bossy to interns. We had to refer to people by Mr./Ms + Surname for a while, the management team has a different office and a different canteen.
Kollegenzusammenhalt
As the management team (about 15 people) separated themselves from the actual work scene, the rest of us (about 30 people) were quite fun and active both within and outside the work. The intern/working student team is full of young, international people and everyone is very open to helping each other.
Work-Life-Balance
The working hours of Siemens Healthineers are by default very chill - we had only 35 hours a week. But in the ITT team, we did not have sick leave, if we were sick we had to show a doctor's report before noon and even then our day was not paid, women did not have the choice to do home-office on their periods, and were kinda scolded for being in pain. We had a hybrid system but they wanted us in the office on certain days for weird tasks like showing off internationalism during a business meeting, without asking our availability to come to the office that day. So it was hybrid until they commanded us to come to the office the last minute.
Vorgesetztenverhalten
Every team had different approaches to this and some of the managers were really professional team leaders. However some of them had no interest in conflict solutions, they would give the interns a deadline to fix a problem on their own, and expect these interns to find various solutions to major problems, apply them, and get them ready to use without being a headache.
Interessante Aufgaben
Every team had interesting tasks and the interns were kinda free to find themselves some new interesting projects.
Gleichberechtigung
I thought this team needed good diversity management. Within ITT, there were no usual SH regulations. The founder was proud of having an international team, but he was also showcasing us like a shop display. He literally pointed to us by our nationalities during meetings more than 5 times I was there. (This one from Nigeria, this Vietnam, this Bulgaria, that Spain kind of introducing) Some of us tried to tell that this was not okay and no one paid attention to our calls.
Umgang mit älteren Kollegen
The team was full of under 30 people so we had no generation wars. But having double number of more interns than full-timers made us question if we were taken advantage of.
Arbeitsbedingungen
SH building is very nice, the location is difficult without a car but the facilities are good and modern.
Umwelt-/Sozialbewusstsein
I am not sure about SH environment policies but at ITT there was a huge amount of waste and we tried to warn them but again were not heard.
Gehalt/Sozialleistungen
Intern payment was much better than other companies but our salary was cut during sickness saying "other companies are not even paying the interns". And they overworked working students because of the "high" salary compared to interns.
Karriere/Weiterbildung
SH is an amazing company to work at, but ITT was again disappointing in this. The ITT managers wanted us to continue studying for further degrees in order to keep us as interns. There were some interns or working students who stayed there for over 3 years with the same title. So even though our work was appreciated, we were not offered better positions due to budget.