Worst company in my 12 years in tech - Senior Product Manager Personio Employee Review

One of the worst things about Personio is how they portray themselves as a company. It's all marketing by a specific department. Designed for customer acquisition: "Look how hip and cool we are as a german company. Surely our culture and thus product is great". The reality is the opposite. It's toxic. People are stressed (most have rings under their eyes). And because of that: rude to each other for no reason. When building product it's "fake agile". It's essentially splitting a 6-month (sometimes 1 year) roadmap into 2 weeks sprints that waterfall. And then called scrum. This roadmap then gets "reworked" in endless meetings. Where there's always that new "Lead" who asks onboarding questions. If you're an engineer: Be prepared to work on "breaking the monolith", and delivering features on legacy code at the same time. These features were promised to customers in fancy keynotes to customers. Apple style. If you're a designer: Expect to design a lot of stuff that will just stay in Figma or Miro. Some managers will even ask to produce work just to show that design is having an impact. To show to their leads respectively. Not delivering product value, that customers so desperately ask for during feedback sessions. Because it takes ages given the legacy code. See above. For PMs: Be prepared to work with stressed teams. A third of them still onboarding because a pre-IPO company has to grow. And good ones left. Be flexible with company goals and team focus. As you'll be asked to shift priorities constantly. The CEO has this cult of personality. And he has a strong circle of "followers" within the company that don't have a life except for Personio. Instead of elevating the team in media announcements —there's always his face.