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      Critical TechWorks

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      Critical TechWorks Reviews

      3.5

      66% would recommend to a friend

      (512 total reviews)

      51% positive business outlook

      Ratings by category

      4.3

      Diversity and inclusion

      4.0

      Work/Life balance

      3.5

      Culture and values

      3.3

      Career opportunities

      3.2

      Compensation and benefits

      2.8

      Senior management

      Critical TechWorks has an employee rating of 3.5 out of 5 stars, based on 512 company reviews on Glassdoor which indicates that most employees have a good working experience there. The Critical TechWorks employee rating is in line with the average (within 1 standard deviation) for employers within the Information Technology industry (3.9 stars).

      Reviews by job title

      512 reviews
      2.0
      4 Dec 2019

      Nop, not really

      Software developer
      Recommend
      CEO approval
      Business outlook

      Pros

      - Informal atmosphere. - Very ambitious area. - Very friendly and helpful coworkers. - Nice company ideals and policies proclaimed. - Several people like Director of Happiness and Chief Technical Titans are rockstars and just the experience of working with them make it worthwhile spending here a year or so.

      Cons

      - Company is disorganised mess. - Not agile, workflow is fully defined by BMW (AG or Car IT), no one has the guts to try to address it to BMW. - Salary is a joke compared to contributions company expects you to do and don't even try to compare it to the salaries German colleagues have for the same job. - A lot of technology is outdated, BMW colleagues doesn't want to change them and there are no tools exist in the company to enforce migration to new tech. - Implementation of company ideals and policies has nothing to do with theory. In reality company is very hierarchical and nontransparent. Meanwhile management tries to shift all the responsibilities to employees, as theoretically company has flat structure. - Lots of people whose role and responsibilities are very unclear to others. Huge gap in workload between some colleagues at the same proficiency level. - Proficiency evaluation process is so worthless, unfair and humiliating. You will waste your time to collect feedback and examples of what you've done right, while all of this will be dismissed and will be never mentioned on your manager meeting. You are being delivered the fact that you have proficiency level X now (they can downgrade you), and no reasoning or examples of what you did wrong or what you didn't do are provided. Your arguments and examples are not accepted, decision is made by one person, there is no way to ask for independent reevaluation. - While they always say that you should contribute to company culture and help improve processes, this is imposible to achieve in reality due to lack of anonymous feedback at all, strong hierarchical structure and lack of transparency for employees. - Very blurry career opportunities, as there are no real criteria for evaluation of your work. Your career growth is defined by how your manager "feel". - Company tries hard to create nice image on social media and suggests employees to reference company, repost and participate in discussions on public resources. In the same time employees opinion about company is overlooked. - IT infrastructure is horrible, it is unreliable, there are too many mandatory communication channels. Offices are really overpopulated. - There are too many interns and juniors in company. They have to do complicated tasks often related to security and safety, while they don't really have relevant experience to do it. Few seniors are too overwhelmed with their work for the project to teach and train so many juniors and review their work properly.

      avatar
      Critical TechWorks Response
      3y
      Thank you for your honest feedback. This is a tough review to read, but it is pertinent and gives us a chance to clear some issues. But in the time since it was written, several things have changed, namely: -We are continuously perfecting our culture, specifically our organizational culture. We can proudly say we are as flat and non-hierarchical as we can be. It comes with its own set of problems, but we acknowledge that all systems require constant improvement and work on it daily. -We have multiple channels of feedback to allow every individual to contribute. From town hall-like Breakfast Talks to regular anonymous Peakon surveys and the Speak Freely channel. Constant feedback is the environment that operates change at Critical Techworks. -Proficiency evaluation has been perfected and streamlined. Facilitators from all across the company (as independent as you wish them to be) can help you and direct you towards your goal. Yes, your proposal can be rejected (as with all evaluation systems, otherwise, what is the point?), but your choice of facilitator can help ensure you build the best possible argument for yourself. -Our Hybrid work model kicked in and alleviated our office capacity. We have since moved in to new offices in Porto and will soon inaugurate a new building for our Lisbon office. -Pay discrepancy between Portugal and Germany is unfortunately not something we can control. We try our best to be competitive within the industry, and we regard remuneration as a package that includes but is not limited to salary. -Our relationship with BMW has evolved. Indeed, pushing our Agile principles is not easy, but strides have been made. The quality of our work has been such that they have come to trust us over time and no longer push as forcibly toward their way of doing things. That said, the great challenge - and the great motivation - of working at Critical Techworks is to foster and care for a healthy working relationship with our partners in Munich. It’s not always easy, and it’s something that will never be complete - it’s always there to be improved upon. However, it is gratifying when a small company like ourselves can impose some new values (Agile, Flat Hierarchy, Autonomy) into a titanic company like BMW. I hope that you have witnessed some of these changes in the time since you have written this. If you are still with us, please feel free to voice your concerns (new or old) on our fortnightly surveys anonymously, and we will start a conversation from there. We all want to improve, always. If you have chosen to work elsewhere, let me thank you again and apologize for letting your review fall through the cracks. We wish you a bright future and all the success you deserve nonetheless.
      1.0
      24 Mar 2019

      Avoid! Just head count.

      Senior software engineer
      Recommend
      CEO approval
      Business outlook

      Pros

      - Projects are related to some of the most relevant topics.

      Cons

      - The company is not agile. Execution is defined either by AG or Car It. - No Technical Independence. - You are treated as a subcontractor. - Inappropriate and outdated communication methods.

      avatar
      Critical TechWorks Response
      7y
      Thank you for your feedback. We are glad that projects are relevant and we are proud to be key in BMW`s transformation towards a tech-company. We recognize your concern about hiring and growing at a fast pace; it is challenging in several areas but also brings some opportunities. Complex and innovative products involve several teams from different entities, and we don’t believe we should impose on them an agile method. We believe in agile as a collaboration mindset and it should be an organic growth. To fine-tune collaboration (methods and tools) in large products and organisations takes time and effort but we are prepared to do it. We know that we are not there yet. We encourage you to participate in defining the company where you want to be.
      2.0
      18 Dec 2019

      Not that Good!

      Software developer
      Recommend
      CEO approval
      Business outlook

      Pros

      - Flexible working hours - Easy going atmosphere - Master Chef doing excellent treats and especially warmhearted - Some good people, that are going to leave soon (because the project, in general, is getting in a bad direction) - Some few projects are up and running if you're lucky you are in one of them, if not you are getting lost in front of a screen

      Cons

      - Management with no vision, no honesty but they try to pretend to be the opposite (focus on what it looks like, not on what it is for real) - Lots of show off, I would say show off is the most important part to survive here - Happiness policies, basically you need to be happy otherwise you'll be seen as a problem - The only thing that's the most important is the number of employees (hire, hire, hire, no matter what) - Management is dishonest, when they hire you they say your salary is going to be revised in 6 months (that's a harsh untruth) - Nobody introduces you to the project, you're thrown to the project and then they expect you to survive or rely on someone nearby to get you involved (but there's no responsibility on this) (if you're lucky you will have a nice colleague otherwise you will be let by yourself) - The evaluation process is a joke, nonsense argumentation is used to keep you at the same level, even though it is an absurd (basically you're depend of one guy and if he had a bad feeling about you...you have no chance to complain) Decisions are made and you're only informed - You need to please some people - Flat hierarchy doesn't exist, in reality, the information is concentrated in a few people and it's difficult to get to know the whole picture - What does exist is a mess in terms of organization, and that mess is an open path to terrible decisions - The most part of the projects are terribly tedious and badly, badly managed - Agile is another joke - Several projects don't really have anything to develop, and no action is taken on that - Lack of structure and the management seems not being able to react on that - Knowledge sharing is a difficult process and pretty limited

      avatar
      Critical TechWorks Response
      6y
      Thank you for the feedback. We understand some of your claims and we know that there is space for improvement – like everywhere. We decided to start Critical Techworks with a blank page and a new mindset supported and created by everyone’s participation. This decision requires the involvement of all of us, openness for experimentation, failure, and a long-term mindset. During this journey we are and will face difficulties, continuous improvement, ability to adapt and flexibility is our stability. What we aim is not immediate, but we are sure than in some years from now, we will look back and we will be proud of what we did. To navigate in the unknown can be an uncomfortable – I get that and we all have that feeling once in awhile – but what is important is having our end vision in mind and working towards that each day together. We can sense from your comment that the mindset and ways of working we are trying to implement are not aligned with what you want for yourself and that you are looking for short term results. If that is the case, Critical Techworks might not be the best fit for you, and that’s ok too. The world has plenty of excellent opportunities; you should not lose them. We are more than open to support you in looking for something that will make you happy. However, we would love to be able to count on you for the long run and invite you to talk to us, propose solutions and help us build together this new mindset and create Critical Techworks together.
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      Glassdoor has 589 Critical TechWorks reviews submitted anonymously by Critical TechWorks employees. Read employee reviews and ratings on Glassdoor to decide if Critical TechWorks is right for you.