Good working conditions, interesting field of work.
Gut am Arbeitgeber finde ich
The field of work and trying to make the benfits of open source usable for customers and society. Focussing on sustainable growth rather than VC driven growth. Coping with disruptive developments. Good intentions and willing to correct if things don't work.
Schlecht am Arbeitgeber finde ich
We don't have the head count of Microsoft or similar, so we are sometimes stretched thin at some points and that can feel stressful. But nobody has a magic wand, I understand that.
Verbesserungsvorschläge
Be more supportive in longer term inovative projects. The periodic Hackathons are too ineffective IMHO.
Arbeitsatmosphäre
Focussed to make the endeavour work and grow the robustness of the teams. I feel that everyone is welcome to contribute, grow expertise and share it with colleagues. I've not experienced much sandbagging, e.g.
Kommunikation
Open and yet focussed on the goals. People and leadership try to keep it efficient to avoid information overload despite having an open discussion culture.
Kollegenzusammenhalt
Very supportive atmosphere and exchange of know-how. There's a rule of "disagree and commit", so teams and stakehoders dealing with an issue are invited to challenge proposals as good as they can, to achieve results that work as good as possible, but once a decision has been reached, the team is expected to follow the decided plan to the next milestone. Also, at least in the development department, colleagues are willing to help or take over in case someone gets stuck on a topic. So called "offsite" meetings (which may actually be on-prem as contrast to remote) are organized periodically to get the team(s) talk to each other and learn techniques for better planing, communication etc. - If a team e.g. decides that a party is to be held to grow team spirit, then that can be part of the "offsite".
Work-Life-Balance
Remote work is the primary mode of operation, everyone is aware that remote workers need to be treated as first class and that workflows need to work for everyone. IIRC the timezones of the colleagues are chosen to be close Germany, so there is overlap for regular daily meetings for face 2 face communication. Leadership and teams try to accomodate for odd situations that may occur e.g. in life with children.
Vorgesetztenverhalten
There's an explicit will to treat everyone fair. I think it works most of the time. AFAICS leadership is open for challenging processes and decisions.
Interessante Aufgaben
As developer and maintainer of an IAM solution and enterprise Linux distribution, stability and security are core topics. There are other areas of IT business that may be more cutting edge "move fast, break things" style. To me it's interesting to work on topics that come with long term maintenance, robustness and incorporating new developments into existing solutions. The spectrum is wide and covering it is offering unique challenges for team work.
Gleichberechtigung
Univention makes a point of supporting diversity. E.g. there were internal discussions about BLM, choice of wording in public documentation and communication. The discussions showed diverse opinions and a consens has been found that seems to work for most and at least show that there is awareness about the impact of language etc.
Umgang mit älteren Kollegen
I've not seen age discrimination, neither positive nor negative.
Arbeitsbedingungen
Technical issues are a fact of work life and the company has process and structure to address them efficiently. Notebooks are handed out and replaced as necessary. There's a clean desk policy in the Bremen offices as tables are used freely. There's a concept of silent/mixed/loud rooms and sound isolation has been considered on a reasonable level. Every desk is hight-adjustable, has two monitors and a docking station. There are rooms that can be reserved for meetings and longer calls. There's a locker wall where people can store personal stuff. There are two kitchens, free coffee etc.. People bring usually bring their lunch break food from home, otherwise there's a bakery in short walking distance and the infrastructure on the Bremen University close by.
Umwelt-/Sozialbewusstsein
IIRC there was a work bike offering, not sure what the status is, maybe there was few request for it given all the home office. During the refugee surge from Syria a bunch of colleagues went to offer an introductory evening sessions into IT topics for people that where accommodated in a near by camp. Leadership was supportive in that initiative that was broght forward by individuals.
Gehalt/Sozialleistungen
There are places where you can earn more money. The leadership is aware of that and transparent in trying to raise the bar. There's the opportunity to pay into a company supported private pension, which can be beneficial with respect to taxation for the employee.
Image
The image created by HR and marketing are setting expectations and that is great. Work is challenging and there are issues to be solved. Univention is doing a pretty good job to balance everything, IMHO. We are not working in vaccuum but are bound into communication with customers, partners and competitors. The Univention Summit is showing what the company can do and it's not a fake show.
Karriere/Weiterbildung
The hierarchy is not as flat as it used to be. There's C-level, there's departments leads, there's team leads and other functional roles like product owners, software architect, head of documentation etc. Things are not very rigid. There are no hard-and-fast rules who "raises" to a different role, but people try their best to get the right know-how into the right position. And people can step "down" from a position if they find that it's not working out the way they envisioned it. No hard feelings usually. Sure, soup can be hot, but not in a malicious way. -- Professional development is depending on the individual drive to do so. There are personal budgets for taking online courses and IIRC people are expected to report their experience in the internal blog so people can see what might be worthwile. Usually learning new stuff is part of everyday work. The bi-weekly sprint/iteration planing and epic refinements are trying to estimate the required effort in a way that everybody in the team can do any issue. If you are not that experienced, then the team tries to cosider the learning curve. People attend conferences on relevant topics.
Arbeitgeber-Kommentar
Dear team member,
Thank you for this very positive review! You highlight many things that define us. Whether it’s the “disagree and commit” principle, which allows for honest and comprehensive discussions while also ensuring that we make decisions and move forward, or our offsites, which play a key role in team building and aligning our goals. I also appreciate how you describe our career opportunities and that it’s possible to take a step back if a new role turns out not to be the right fit. Personal development is a core value for us, and as your rightly pointed out, learning new things is part of everyday work at Univention. We encourage all employees to be curious and courageous, and many times, we've found that we learn the fastest by seeing how things don’t work.
It’s great to have you as part of our team!
Best regards,
Stefan