A company not meant for engineers - Senior Software Engineer Vio.com Employee Review

Thanks for taking the time to write this review. I am sorry that your experience with us was so disappointing. Some of the issues you mentioned are definitely points for improvement and I'll get back to those later. On the other hand, some things you say are not fair. I'll give a bit of background about your case so that readers of this review have all the facts. Relocating from overseas is always a life-changing decision and something we don't take lightly. We have the honest intention to retain the people we hire and help them succeed in Amsterdam, both professionally and personally. In your case that didn't happen, but many other engineers relocated to work for us and had a very different experience. In your case we saw worrying signs of low motivation and commitment with the team already very soon, and we shared our concerns with you promptly. I wished you would have given us some feedback about how you were really feeling earlier so that we could have tried better to make it work for you. Eventually, when I told you that we wanted to let you go (6 months after you joined), we gave you a generous severance package and we did all we could to help you find the next role. Your review title "A company not meant for engineers", and saying that only "fresh graduates" may thrive here are not fair. This company and you were not meant for each other, and that's completely fine. I know you are a skilled engineer and I am sure you'll succeed somewhere else. Just because you did not fit here does not mean that other senior engineers will not fit perfectly well. In fact, as of today we don't have any "fresh graduate" engineer working with us, and most technical leads have been with us for years (happily enough that they endured the rough patches any startup must eventually go through). Of course, expectations for senior engineers are very high and to live up to them, exceed them and eventually grow in a small startup with plenty of other experienced engineers on board is hard. When we hire someone as a senior engineer we are expecting you'll find your way to deliver a major impact in the company. Motivation and drive to make an impact are arguably the most important traits we are after when hiring senior engineers. As I see it, the role of the company leadership is to make it possible by removing obstacles and supporting you, but you need to be driver. This is something we probably were not clear enough when we hired you, and is something we are stressing now with all our new hires. Regardless of the context, I think you raised valid points of improvement: * It is true that our company is having a hard time moving from our marketing-focus history to a customer-centric product company. It's not an easy transition and we are trying to hire the right talent to speed up that process. However, being strong in online marketing is an absolute prerequisite to become a (profitable) global player in the travel industry. * Also true that collaboration across teams can and should be improved. Already when you were with us we took measures such as a regular architecture review session where all teams expose their architecture and future plans to the feedback/criticism of other teams. We are also promoting much more actively the movement of engineers across teams, consolidating the tech stack, and therefore increasing the ability for all teams to touch each other's codebases. * The fact that an experienced and skilled engineer like yourself didn't succeed here is also our failure. We have taken measures to increase the focus of our recruitment process on cultural fit and to give candidates a very clear idea of what it means to work with us. Thank you again not only for your review but also for the work you did while you were with us. Best, German CTO, FindHotel