Personio reviews

The Loudest Dog Barks: There's a clear idolization within engineering leadership for those who bark orders, even if these individuals are obvious backstabbers, undermine others, or are simply ignorant of anything outside their narrow perspectives. This is a troubling and significant shift that usually forecasts a darker future for the entire company. When engineers are preoccupied with internal power dynamics they lose focus on delivery and instead engage in politics, where aggressive — albeit, frankly, incapable — individuals often assume leadership roles. Parallel Universes: While the engineering department is severely understaffed, total compensation has been cut by 25% due to the devaluation of shares this year. This occurred despite work contracts explicitly stating the value of the shares in currency not in volume, which the company unilaterally modified from a position of power. These shares are essentially "Monopoly money" until the company's IPO, an event that remains a huge question mark, especially given the current C-level leadership's questionable capability to execute it. The CEO consistently demonstrates how detached he is from reality on every AMA session, particularly when he encourages people to leave if they aren't "committed to the goals." These "goals" are often sandbox-level objectives, completely lacking concrete strategies on "how" to achieve them. A layer of managers (some of whom, to be frank, were real troublemakers) and a handful of engineers were laid off recently mostly from US. However, the communication and execution of this layoff — the third in just 18 months — were abysmal, to say the least. It feels as though layoffs are often the result of emotional decisions, even if the C-level attempts to rationalize them afterward with the unwavering support of the HR lead. The whole situation can feel a bit like a dramatic, drawn-out concert. Broken Growth Matrix: Promotions and levels are determined by political skill, often disguised as "impact." Hard skills are considered a given, while teamwork, mentoring, and organizational abilities seem secondary to an outdated view of individual contribution. Management frequently lays back or offers empty "pep talks" but is quick to place employees on PIPs or even fire them if they don't conform to a predefined box. This creates constant fear, teaching engineers to prioritize maintaining their image over genuine growth or being a good team player. Sadly, many engineers get drawn into this game without understanding the long-term consequences for their reputation or career prospects. Very few engineers are aware of this dynamic, and those who are, are likely already working on their exit strategies. Summary The company's current trajectory, coupled with a shift in engineering culture where managers support and listen to the loudest but, frankly, least capable engineers, is creating an increasingly toxic workplace, despite the CEO's differing communications. Reality will inevitably hit hard.

- The Product and Engineering department has had an unhealthy scale-up over the last 6 months by hiring new engineering managers, senior - staff engineers, product managers, and other executives. The Personio ‘culture’ can no longer be experienced because of this unhealthy ‘hyper-growth’, especially in places where entire new teams were just hired with little to no representation of tenured employees and without onboarding on the product and processes. - Choosing not to promote from within and not having tenured employees to lead these new teams has caused the new decision makers (e.g. product managers, product designers, product experts, etc.) to behave like the blind leading the blind - where everyone wants to leave their mark and pass probation without knowing about the effects of their decisions. - Team leadership has not been appropriately vetted during the interview process, and continuous feedback during the probation process is no longer practiced especially for team management (i.e. engineering managers, product managers, and product designers). - Constantly changing priorities on a company level (lately every 6 months, sometimes quarterly) makes it next to impossible to complete an initiative in product teams which becomes negative during performance evaluations through no fault of your own. These ever-changing priorities cause constant re-estimations every few months where engineers pause delivery and focus on discovery and estimations - often resulting in complete scrap and rework. - There is a lot of friction among teams, especially because many mid-senior leaders are new and want things done their way without proper onboarding on the product or already established processes. - New managers (in both product and engineering) don’t seem to understand the complexity of the product offering and the engineering that goes into it, often asking developers to reduce estimates and deciding on team priorities and product direction without proper research and understanding the consequences. - Promotions are few and far apart for tenured employees, no proper career ladder is available and there is no transparency in the process or guidance about objectives - many believe that the promotion case is left to the whim of the engineering manager. - There is no financial motivation outside the base salary - although virtual shares are given it's unclear when the next share buy-back would happen (initially promised once a year, now communicated as tied to a seed round - when the next seed round will happen is unclear). Furthermore, there is no bonus offering and annual salary increments are laughable for a company of this scale.