Reviews voor Adyen

Minpunten

In deze functie zou het interessant zijn als er meer overlegd wordt binnen het team.

Minpunten

- Legacy codebase. Some people are trying to change things but it feels like the leadership is not focused on code quality at all.
- Whenever you want to try something new, security team would intervene and you would have to justify everything you are doing. This makes it very difficult to try and learn new things.
- The learning depends on the stream lead. While some stream leads are really good, some stream leads just do not focus on team's learning at all.
- Everyone works on one branch, master. Need I say more!

Minpunten

Task in Operational and Technical Support are repetitive.

Too much independence is given to entry-level and junior staff.

Custom-built software is prone to errors and counterproductive.

A very forced work culture. Employees have to pretend to (' talk straight' and 'launch fast').

Alot of big egos and subtle politics. But this differs from team to team.

New hires are given tasks with little context and guidance.

Telling the staff that they are responsible for their own development is Adyen's way of not taking responsibility for proper training.

Some teams lack chemistry and proper guidance form team leads.

Minpunten

I don't see myself staying at Adyen for much longer than a year for a few reasons:

- The senior developers are really not open to change. They've decided that their way of doing things for the past 10 years is the way to go and that's that. For instance, they prefer writing and maintaining custom tools for streaming data processing instead of using well-documented and reliable open source solutions. Even considering all the security concerns that come with using third-party software, custom-building everything is just error-prone and counterproductive since it takes time and resources away from developing Adyen's actual products. This is the most glaring example of their way of thinking I could briefly provide here. Really, their stubbornness is evident every time a discussion about best practices or anything code-related comes up.

- It follows from the point above that as an Adyen developer you get very little exposure to new technologies, which makes the job itself quite boring and is probably a bad thing career-wise. They explain this lack of new tech as being very concerned about security, which I appreciate since we are talking about a payments company. But being overly risk-averse is not good for anyone involved.

- The culture ('we talk straight', 'we launch fast', etc.) feels very forced. Some people seem to love the culture, or are very good at pretending they do. To me it feels like there is this constant tension as company politics and egos clash but everyone still pretends Adyen is always wonderful. It feels to me that a lot of people are just going along with it until they are ready to move on to something else. And some people thrive in this culture and end up becoming decision-makers for better or for worse.

- This may differ from team to team, but the onboarding process for new developers is not good at all. New hires are given tasks with very little context (and not everyone has prior experience in payments). Sure, they can go around asking anyone and everyone who might be able to guide them, but I think team leads should feel a greater deal of responsibility in seeing how their new developers are doing and to provide some guidance.

- The team leads, although they really are smart people, are focused solely on the company and their respective products and pay very little attention to people management. Some teams are malfunctioning, but the team leads either don't notice or don't care. This doesn't make for a pleasant working environment some days.

Minpunten

The cons I have are really more of a question of genuine fit. Adyen isn't great for people who aren't excited by the points mentioned under the pros.

Minpunten

Communication within the company and across departments could sometimes be better. But it is improving. Training for new starters could improve- not much structure and very much learn on the job/ask your colleagues. I understand processes are being put in place to improve this.

Minpunten

It is with great sadness that I write this review after years of being at Adyen but I find it necessary for the company to listen without putting myself in the crossfire.

I would entice everyone to read at the positive reviews and see if they give pointed examples or facts as I do here. You will notice most are insipid because
1) they are 'requested' by HR to write reviews
2) they really have not substantive material to defend their position.

I would suggest the company is a great option for people who are far enough in their careers or just starting off.

- Compensations: Low base salaries, and bad stock options (read below).

- Stock options: As mentioned stock options are very low. New hires received the same as old hires. 100 stock options

- Removed Management: Upper level management (e.g. COO) removed all of the managers (Marketing, Sales, Technical Support, etc.) because they supposedly could not bring the company to scale and replaced them with people with a big ego, b-level pedigrees, and who had the 'culture' that fit with the COO

- Department Management: They believe their way of doing things is right without taking too much into consideration members who have been in the payment's industry longer than they have. They may be expert is marketing or sales, yet not when it comes to payments. Listen.

- Retention: Most people leave because of low compensation or no career growth (read below), they have left to Stripe or some other lead competitor. I really wish them all the best.

- No Career growth unless...: As others have mentioned, no career growth is true. HR and Management will say there is no career path set and that it is not a place for people who want "flat structure and told what to do". They seem to put the blame on something being wrong with you and not them. They need to listen. The company has seen a number of these examples play out.

1) If you want to join a different team they will say they are not hiring for that team to keep you from joining. Even if you try to do projects with the team and make moves so that you are already doing the role, you will not be given the role. It is evident you can not create your own career path. There is no commitment and only postpone having conversations about career progress. If you have another offer, take it. They will not ever be able to match.

The honest difference between those who have advanced e.g. Account management > product management or some other department is because they fit the 'culture'.

- Kool-Aid: It is a forced culture, you have to drink the kool-aid. Very few people are actually aware of what is going on.

- Not scaling: Will not hire engineers because it would be impossible to retain them, they will only ever have business people and even some core team they will not hire. It is all in Amsterdam.

- Ego: Management in SF does have an ego

- Perception is reality: If someone has a problem with you, they will not come to you, and has the ear of management you will fall out of favor.

Minpunten

The aforementioned flat structure leads to a lack of formally defined leadership positions, so those looking for a more traditional path of individual contributor --> manager --> director may not find what they're looking for here.

Minpunten

There can be some lag between offices when it comes to email responses and follow ups, but that's the norm with any international company. Since New York is in between our SF and Amsterdam offices, we have time in the morning to catch up with Europe, and time in the afternoon to see what SF is up to.

Since we're a smaller team in NY, we're not as structured as some of the larger offices. Employees have a lot of autonomy, and are responsible for their own success. For me, that's a huge plus, but it may be negative for people who need more day-to-day support. The larger offices have more departments and structure built in, which I'm sure NY will have as it grows.

Minpunten

Management doesn't seem to want their team to grow and flourish into what they want to pursue. This has often caused friction between managers and their team. New managers that come in focus on business, not people. And that is why we lose people. Sometimes there is a feeling of forced culture.