I joined Personio under the the pretence of a truly European company that lives up to the values that come with operating in this area of the global SaaS space, with friendly teams across the continent and a truly hybrid approach to work. Unfortunately, it feels like over the past year or so this has taken a turn, a lot of the most recent reviews here will argue negatively. Personally, I'd say this depends what you're looking for from a company. I'll bullet point the highlights here for where I've found cons from my perspective, and let the reader make their own mind up. - It is not "European". This is a Munich centric company, all high level decisions are made here (and more recently to some extent by our US remote based colleagues) and other offices simply need to follow suit. I'd go so far as to say a lot of decisions are actually made outside of zoom calls, so if you're not in the same office, good luck. Admittedly, this has improved somewhat with the move into Amsterdam however this yet to be seen if it will pay off long term. - The product is generally behind competitors and it is certainly not ready to be used to its full potential outside of DACH in its current iteration. In my time here the product has not changed much (1.5 years). At this stage of funding, Personio needs to be moving faster and unfortunately, after the hyper-hiring growth phase of last year it has moved a lot of initiatives to either a standstill or to be reworked by new senior hires to the 'n-th' degree over and over again. Generally it is getting more political too, your ability to do work that you feel really matters for your team depends on who you know above and how often you're actually allowed to be in a zoom call with the higher ups. - On the hiring point, we hired aggressively last year, and in this year, we have hired more strategically from FAANG. For me, this is a double edged sword. On the one hand things brings some exceptional talent (at a € premium) into the fold who have great experience. But on the other side; one, FAANG is not in the same space as Personio commercially so the strategic decisions will not naturally align in the immediate sense and two, this brings in talent who made their mark from a time when money was cheap and funding rounds were plentiful, this is no longer the case. Throwing bodies and € at a problem no longer works and for the ambitions of Personio, this strategy is risky (as per the title). - Async/Hybrid/Remote. Personio models itself as a true hybrid company. However most teams are based in different offices so it is effectively remote (unless you're in Munich). This causes 2 main side effects; 1, async processes become extremely important and honestly, it's pot luck if you get a team that does this well, some teams do, and other teams do this terribly. 2, professional development is weak. I can honestly say working here has made me feel like I have gone backwards in my abilities, I spend more time trying to find someone who knows the "Personio" way of doing something rather than actually solving a problem. - Culture. Again, quite a pot luck here, there are pockets of really friendly teams at Personio, unsurprisingly these have all been in teams that are located exclusively in the same office. However in recent times there has certainly been a noticeable shift to silos and people out only for themselves (the latest performance review round did not help here). Equally, going back to the point of teams being effectively remote causes a degradation in collaboration and empathy. I think if you're the type of person to want to just keep their head down and churn out tickets then you'll probably be ok, remote isn't all bad from this perspective, just don't expect much autonomy in the type of work you'll be doing. - Career progression is.. difficult. Unfortunately we've got to a place where it is honestly just easier to get another job elsewhere. The hoops you are made to jump through now are both extremely lengthy and promotion cycle is infrequent, but also require you to be relatively friendly with the committee who end up reviewing your case. The promotion committees do their best but this at the very least unconsciously comes through at promotion time. Most people I speak to are either actively, or passively looking for a new role unfortunately. - Technical literacy. On this point it is a very engineering focussed one. As mentioned above there are some extremely talented and smart people working at Personio but they are, in my opinion, unfortunately not being leveraged to their full potential. C Suite and management focus on features & product offerings so heavily that good engineering practices and principles are just not being followed. So if you like just churning out features without thinking about how this affects the wider business then you'll be fine. Don't expect to get the space to really architect something unless you're a staff engineer, and even then, they are clearly pushed into delivery of features to a huge degree.
