Babbel Reviews

Lack of transparency- Babbel prides itself on its “flat hierarchy.” This creates a culture where there is no clear ownership over anything, and the fault of this rests on the Individual Contributors (ICs). As a result, there now exists a culture of managers blaming their team for underperformance. Any feedback given is either ignored, or used to gaslight employees. As an employee, you are unable to ask a question to leadership and get a direct, honest answer (they often even lie). C Levels make rash decisions, often without consulting or notifying people that are involved, including line managers. Whole teams/departments are let go, without notice or clear reason. When ICs ask questions about it, they are berated. There is low trust in C levels after our 2019 layoffs, and yet they continue “restructuring” the company in silence. Employees often to find out through the grapevine, months before the anyone in a leadership position addresses these issues publicly. Sexism- Internal audits have shown that women are promoted less often and paid less than their male counterparts. C-Levels only verbally acknwoledge this problem, but have taken no steps to rectify it. C-Levels have forced women to step down from leadership positions without notice, and then publicly shamed them in front of the whole company (via email, and in ‘Exec AMA’ sessions). This is a trend I’ve observed over several years at Babbel. Strategy- The company strategy exists in theory, but teams are not given the resources they need to work towards the vision. There is no product roadmap, and as a result, Product teams are working in silos and coworking. Product teams are not given the resources they need to make any meaningful impact in the product. The core product experience has not changed in several years. Rather than fix known issues with the product, Babbel is releasing half thought-out features in an attempt to differentiate itself from the other apps, with very little quality control. The ‘quantity over quality’ approach is burning ICs out very quickly, because the more granular ‘vision’ of the app is constantly shifting, projects get dropped, and changes that do make it into product often have little to no impact. Low salary- In late 2019, Babbel began an internal review of its salary grid with the intention of bringing employees up to “market” Berlin rates. We are currently in mid-2021, and this salary grid update has not been shared with the company, and no one has been brought up to market value. Most people in my department are paid 30% (or more) below what they should be paid, and when anyone brings this issue up, C-Levels just say that they are ‘working on it.’ Of course, because of this, people are leaving. High churn- So many people are unhappy at Babbel, and as a result, are leaving or taking long sick leaves due to burnout. Some people in key positions have left (e.g., Head ofs, Director of), and the company seems to have no interest in replacing them, leaving entire teams without a manager, which is terrible for professional development.

The biggest con is that the environment has made very competent colleagues question their own skills and the value they bring, leading to decreasing confidence and overwhelming imposter syndrome. There is no thought leadership in how to actually build products, as well as an active refusal for anyone to take on this responsibility. This leads most of the creative and user centric functions to advocate for themselves daily for a seat at the table in any product decisions. When these concerns are raised, we are met with leaders questioning our reality and taking offense to ICs highlighting the fact that we need and expect more from them. Marketing runs the show. If you are passionate about delivering good products that solve real problems, this is not the place for you. The product organization lacks any strong hold in strategic decision making, leaving the whole department to work reactively to other stronger decision makers. This lack of strategic vision leads to long, unfocused discovery processes ending in the smallest most technically feasible release, which brings minimal at best value to users. These processes can take up to a year, and once features are released they are typically left untouched in the product for many months more. Innovation dies here. Overall, there is a lack of accountable decision making in leadership, putting most if not all of the stress on individual contributors to piece together stories of how things should work, advocate for what what users need, guess what the next random strategic decision will be, and try to make a case for why any good idea is worth anyone's time. This is on top of all of the personal advocating for any career growth or respectable salary.