Pros
Decent base salary if your experience is 3+ years and you can negotiate (around 10% from the initial offe). Especially for administrative people. But, thin bonus schemes and developer salary can be low especially for North America region. Indefinite contract from start. Free lunch and nice office spaces/locations. Nice parties. Relaxed expense policies. You can easily approach other departments / functions / colleagues. Interesting industry. More competitors pop-up as processes become more replicable so if you learn the discipline well you can enjoy some nice rotations for the next 5-10 years. Flexibility to travel to other locations. Work life balance is good but this seems to change a bit. You have certain freedom in your role/responsibilities. This applies only on certain department/roles, don’t expect much freedom on an operational role. Nevertheless. there is no coaching or training so make sure you understand this especially when you join an open ended role. Not much corporate culture in a superficial level at least. (see cons below). Golden cage: If you play your cards right you can run some miles on this company with a relatively good salary and low hassle. However, please factor this on the long run for your career. If you stay more than 3 years you might end up leaving with no transferable skills. As its mentioned in other reviews most processes are internal. Developer wise there is lot of effort spent to re-invent the wheel (mainly because security rejects external solutions and delays/freezes iterations) and this could be detrimental for future prospects.
Cons
Politics. Of course, joining a corporation and not considering that there are going to be office politics is naïve. This con is expected everywhere. However, in particularly for Adyen, there is the trap which is called “Adyen formula”. You will get the idea that there is freedom and flexibility and due to open dutch culture you can speak your mind (without being rude off course). Here you must be incredibly careful as there is a very strict inner cycle where even mentioning something “different” can lead to veeery nasty consequences. This is mentioned in other reviews as well. I cannot offer more details on what these consequences mean but you will notice people suddenly exempt from work for no apparent reason. Middle management: There is literally no managerial training for team leads and if you are unlucky to run into untrained/ambitious people you have to be very careful on how you react as you will never receive any feedback, just consequences. On the bright side, if you keep a fake smile and pretend to work you can flourish. Have seen main projects unfinished for years and routine tasks failing frequently but you can get away with blame culture mixed with adyen formula quotations. It’s sad to say it but performance does not matter, I have seen multiple high performers “disappearing” suddenly. HR: This function is non existent. You will collaborate with them when you come and when you go. They will not coach or try to solve any matters within teams. Be careful not to communicate any issues to them or else you will have nasty reactions. As of the day of this post you can see that in negative glassdoor posts there is no questioning from someone on what happened in bad reviews. Adyen formula / “Culture”: The formula has the same concept as the Bible in middle ages. You can interpret it as you like but in the end it applies for few and will be used against the weak. By few I mean the inner cycle and any newly developed leads of vanity teams. This concept it was good maybe in previous years but due to the insane hiring and untrained management this applies only for the specific inner cycle. Don’t get fooled by the insane hiring. Most of the hires are junior and in some cases without a content which can be a bad realization when you join. It’s not bad to have an open ended role but if ideas (not even mentioning actions…) are penalized severely then obviously things contradict each other. Apart from people disappearing also new joiners leave within the first months.. I have been working for more than 2 years and I only saw 2 interns leaving in good terms (willingly or not…). I am excluding some of the old guard who left due to getting rich during the IPO. I am skeptical on whether the 5 star reviews are real (all really resemble each other) or are written by entry level joiners in most cases.