Publitas - werkgeversreview Software Engineer bij Publitas

Publitas is a people-first company that cares about the well-being of employees. Some of the highlights include a generous amount of vacation days, frequent feedback & collaboration, a remote-friendly, asynchronous/flexible schedule, and transparency across all groups & the entire organization. Other pros include both friendly & intelligent co-workers located around the globe, a well-thought-out and solid remote company culture, and excellent leadership.

The starting salary is on the lower side of the spectrum, which can be an issue in the U.S. where inflation is reaching new heights, however, I do believe that is being addressed.

I have to add 5 words, so here you are.

Here is my experience in a big nutshell, and from day one my brain and gut said something just wasn’t right and was “off”, and potentially will never be right with this company. I was right. And before any might jump to feel or say this is out of bitterness, trust me…. It’s not. There are many many better companies and environments to work for and which real professionals deserve to be a part of (I promise!). Do not allow a company to ever make you feel “you are so lucky to have this job” or that you are not a “fit” because you disagree with bad processes and leadership. A company, if you are a true professional with value, is absolutely lucky and should be honored to have you choose them to be a part of and stay with them. It all comes out in the wash eventually. This is the right company for you if you are fresh out of college and have no knowledge of what is a good company to work for or bad. This is the right company if you are just glad to have a job and you live in a country where “good jobs” are hard to come by. This is the right company for you if you have lots of great proven ideas about approach and strategy, but leadership will always have a better way (the same old way). This is the right place for you if you love to document literally everything in multiple places without any true value or point of doing so. If you are into a job that feels more like college where everything is a course study and learning opportunity (not in a productive or healthy way) and you have to approach every task and process like you’re in a study lab group, because “it seems like a good exercise” to do all of this to end up clogging up the multiple systems and tools with useless, never seen again, busy work of over documentation that is a nightmare to find anything in… this is for you. If you want to go on 1 fun trip to the same place as the last 3 years (“somewhere exciting in the world”)… and party… this is for you, at least for a year or two. If you are naive to actual corporate culture and how companies should value their employees… this is for you. If you fall prey to thinking “work-life balance” is working remotely from anywhere in the world…. Wrong. Work-life imbalance will impact you, your family, your kids, your personal life…. All to be had here. If you want to work for a company that the leaders feel you have to do book reports quarterly to prove yourself (among many other silly and pointless practices and tasks)… and have to jump every time someone reads some whacked out latest and greatest book about how “some” businesses should be run or processes done… this is for you. This company is for you if you want a stepping stone to your next job and an actual career (that is for the younger ones. For the older ones… you know all of this already, so I can’t help you). Some important “learnings”I want to point out about this company: - Glowing Glassdoor reviews. This is low hanging fruit and should be obvious… 1) The reviews (90%+ positive and glowing) are from folks who have been asked to submit a review and many… less than 1 yr (ah…ok). 2) Glassdoor is not a globally well known or used site, so a company based in the EU and their employees being younger, mostly based outside of North America and unaware of Glassdoor means, well, you have to encourage your employees (those who will of course give positive reviews) to go to glassdoor and submit one. ;) So I’m here to shed some light on what you won't hear otherwise. So no need for a “We haven’t received this sort of feedback before so we’re kind of surprised” response to my review. Keep reading… - Trust. There is none here… top down side to side. This should have been my first clue, but literally every conversation (internal and external), meeting (internal and external) and customer encounter is video recorded. I shouldn’t have to repeat that. This is masked (along with many of things) as “transparency”. This is not transparency. This, in the real world, is purely lack of trust of your people. Bottom line is if you do not trust the people you hire to do their job without constant oversight… you’ve hired the wrong people. You’re hiring to scale quickly, not build a company that is meant for anything but flipping. - Being told “run!”. This was early on and again later from another teammate. - Hearing constantly that “my spouse complains about my job and how it affects me and keeps encouraging me to leave”. When it is impacting your employees personal life, their family, kids… there is a massive problem. - “Transparency”. As mentioned above, some companies misinterpret and throw around this term incorrectly. This company does exactly that and it’s in a manner that makes you feel and think (if naive and inexperienced) that “oh, yeah…okay…this company really is open about everything… so recording and over analyzing literally every call, interaction, email, slack message, meeting (internal and external), as if there’s nothing better to do, makes total sense and I’m okay with this!”. Nope. Don’t be naive and if you step into the rest of the world you will see this is not okay and is a trust and product, leadership, company insecurity issue and literally nobody else does this unless, again, they are hiring for scale, hiring young and inexperienced people and have a real “corporate CULTure” issue. - “Ambiguity” in process. This is an understatement and really should be reserved for true start-ups. Stop considering and calling yourself a start-up. Seriously. You should, by now, have your “stuff” together (at least most of it). And this always goes back to “our way is not for everybody…. Not for the traditional… not for those who can’t handle constant change”. Um… okay. Keep telling yourself that is the issue. - Lack of honest and true sense of “team”. I’ve never seen so much pitting team members against each other by leadership. This is not a season or episode of Big Brother where there are constant “plays for dominance and leadership” opportunities by literally every team member on particular teams, that are intentionally stirred up by leadership. This was eye opening. Multiple team members shared (completely offline, so we thought) that they were asked to watch this or that person, review their accounts (as if they didn’t have their own accounts to worry about, as a non-leader) and report back what they found. Almost the entire team had 1:1 conversations with leadership asking them to prove themselves as a leader and “step up and show their worth”. This literally pits the entire team against each other as they all feel they 1) have to prove themselves and go way above and beyond (aka take on the extra work the leader should be doing, for them), 2) constantly watching everything from an unhealthy team perspective 3) have to speak up and talk over every other person’s ideas, thoughts and questions 4) literally have to fight and scrap for a false opportunity vaguely promised and only out of selfish distrusting ulterior motivation. This is not cool, emotionally for teams. - Openness to ideas. Don’t be afraid of improvements to bad processes and approach with customers when what you’ve been doing, especially in a completely different market like the EU/DACH etc isn’t working in another very important and valuable market. You may say you’re open to ideas, but you’re not. Constantly met with “I respectfully disagree” is the real “rubbish”. I mean, you could play a drinking game to that one phrase said in team meetings over and over whenever anyone other than the leader had an idea. And in 1:1’s you’re constantly told to step up, speak up… why? Sad. Sitting back and watching this happen over and over again was tragic for those that are surprisingly still there. This means only one thing… they have no other option and are comfortable doing the status quo. Another bad sign of a corporate cult mentality. - Respect your customers. You are here only because of them. You have massive and important brand customers in important and opportunity rich large markets on the other side of the world from the majority of the team. If you lay off team members that those clients have established actual relationships with (that nobody else could), those customers should not, months later, be reaching out to those laid off team members for help because they “cannot get a response from support or anyone with the company”. Just embarrassing and horrible customer relationship management, but with the immediate focus on sales sales sales (hiring and scaling those teams), this makes sense. Long term customers are not your focus… sales are. Sounds like scaling to flip… there are playbooks on this model. So, if this is not the case, respond to your customers (support, sales, customer success, leadership), know there worth and value (no matter the market or if they are on the other side of the world. How do you expect to be successful in those markets without knowing who they really are?), immediately have another team member step in and COMMUNICATE the change so the customer (not just one person) knows who to communicate needs with. If not… expect continued churn. - Don't give up on speaking up. Chances are you are not alone if you are a professional and are seeing red flags like the above. It took me almost a year of constantly speaking up about needed process changes, issues with leadership micro-management (like I’ve never seen before), coming to finally see and hear first hand that 95% of the team was unhappy with processes, over documentation, micro-management and borderline abuse of role and to speak up (because communicating with your team members privately was rare and discouraged out of “fear”). Some changes started to appear but after being too late. Squeaky wheel gets the grease as they say. If it has improved at all… and I hope it has for those left behind, then you’re welcome for pushing for all of this to be raised and come to a head. Don’t be afraid to speak up as a team. One person just sounds like complaining… but when the team all feels the same, that should hold weight and say something about things. Just need that one person to speak up and lead the way. From online: What Is A Corporate Cult? Organizations that have a coercive company culture share many of the elements of other cult groups. This can include: * A high level of in-group/out-group thinking * Excessive devotion to “can do no wrong” leadership * Inability to discuss dissenting opinions * If you try to champion change that goes against the way leaders feel… be careful. * Lack of transparency on company culture, practices, or partnerships (more on “transparency” later… this is an overused but rarely accurately used term) * Focus on achieving company goals at all costs, many times at the expense of the employee * Poor work-life balance for employees is used as a systemic means of control (“this is just what it takes here”) * A competition heavy culture that encourages people to work against each other instead of collaboratively Take from this what you will.