Pros
The purpose of the company (breaking the personal banking industry) is meaningful. There are loads of smart people. The teams are truly cross-functional, and quite autonomous, especially in Barcelona. Salaries are above average for Barcelona. There now seems to be an effort from the top to tackle the growing pains (highlighted in the `Cons` section). The office in Barcelona is brand new, very nice, and in a lovely area (Poblenou).
Cons
Successfully shifting from a small start-up build by passionate interns under the guidance of two founders to operating as a global-scale, innovative bank is the single biggest challenge that N26 is facing now: - The company has grown so fast that the processes have not kept up (or in some cases they don't exist yet). This is frustrating. Some information only exist in the brains of long-serving people, for instance. - Some functions are still only in Berlin, and distance makes collaboration harder (thinking of critical ones like the regulated bank, legal, operations, etc. which are crucial for product management). Although it is easy to convince people to come to visit Barcelona for a few days, and some of these functions start to be hired locally as well. - Parts of the company culture are questionable and show that the top management still has trust issues (i.e., they need to learn to let go, N26 is not staffed with interns any more): - working from home is not really allowed (although in Barcelona we are more flexible and do it anyway, but it's not structured) - perks are below-par compared to other start-ups/tech companies in Barcelona (free lunch on Wednesdays only, no restaurant tickets - every perk there is is also offered by the other shiny start-ups in Barcelona, and then some) - the company all-hands is on Fridays at 6pm until 7pm with free pizza, feels like a mechanism to lure people to not leave early for the weekend (this does not prevent people to leave before in Barcelona)
