Pros
- Good work / life balance - Most people are friendly - Nice benefit (not crazy but better than nothing) - Good for a first job - Low risk of bankruptcy
Cons
- Difficult to grow, very dependent on your direct manager Specifically in regard of merchandising in the Berlin office: - Ridiculous and unreachable goals - (increasing quantity over quality) - Incompetent management - not everyone, obviously, but there is a trend to hire many people with a background in consulting that have 0 management experience and are not bringing any value whatsoever. They usually are terrible in dealing with people, helping them grow and possess little to no critical thinking. They push knowledgeable people out while being convinced they are doing the right thing, and are turning other teams against ours. Worse, many high level managers are being reviewed not on the happiness and efficiency of their team, but on their ability to 'amuse', 'entertain' directors and brainwash their reports. It does not encourage anyone to give their best - and it makes most of the people utterly unhappy. I have seen many very smart and competent people leave because of their managers, without them questioning their approach and their method. This definitely needs to change. - Boring work - not all teams are bad, obviously, and daily tasks cannot always be interesting. But in general some teams in merchandising are now not much more than a call center, with highly educated people constantly harassing suppliers to have more useless pug wall art on the website. - Strong micro-management. As managers are new and unsure of what to do, they think that controlling and overwhelming their reports is the solution. Nevermind if everyone else in the world knows that this style of management is not only toxic but also counter-productive. - Performance reviews are supposed to be private and fair. Eventually every one is being discussed with the entire management team during 3 rounds of calibration meetings (there go the privacy...) and people that are doing completely different work are being compared with each other to fill some quotas. Eventually if you are just doing your work very well, without trying to shine by all means, you will never get anything out of it. This is excessively disappointing and discouraging for many hard workers. - Recruiting - i honestly don't understand who thought that hiring random people instead of helping the current employees to grow was a good idea. - Growth - 'nothing is worse than promoting someone that is not ready' (sic). Employee are in charge of their development, but if their manager doesn't care about them, nothing will happen.
