Personio reviews

I know it's been mentioned in several reviews and they're not doing anything to change it, but micromanagement is a shadow cast upon all sales reps, to the point where I've been to regional meetings where it's been encouraged to post "favourable reviews on Glassdoor to help attract new talent". Thus, they know the negative impact the reviews have but plan to do nothing to fix it other than make up reps experience. However, Dublin's tech sector is really small and people talk. On top of that, managers are full of empty promises and lack any decision making power or clue of what's actually going on. It is widely known across all sales teams that foul play and favouritism are things you have to get used to as a rep - stolen accounts, reps changing billing locations & company names so that they can get deals that belong to other regions, etc. - and no one is getting called out because they sometimes are shielded by their managers, who obviously benefit from making their reps "hit" target. This has profoundly affected the morale across sales because decisions are being made based on fake data (quota achievement, performance). Last but not least, I would like to point out that it's been proudly mentioned by senior management that they only "hire good looking reps because a nice face always sells better". For a company that presents itself as inclusive and woke, it's really alarming to know that they have people in influential positions making these kind of comments, which makes me think that they feel entitled to because, again, they know for a fact that there won't be any consequences.

- Personio has grown to impressive revenue levels and that's achievement can't be taken away but at the end of the day it's a German business that can't figure out how to grow beyond the region. Have fallen asleep at the wheel last 2 years now allowing competition to come in and effectively close off markets for future growth. The product is good but not good enough and has had no innovation beyond a nice redesign. Have wasted mountains of cash propping up a top heavy product and engineering org to look like a big tech company rather than focusing on good talent who can actually do the work and ship stuff. Payroll has potential but fear it's a sunk cost fallacy at this point. - Lack of focus, constantly shifting priorities. Nothing ever gets finished, stopped or paused because new fires emerge. This is normal in a scaleup but in most places you make trade offs. At Personio it's all things all the time meaning below average execution. Strategies sound great and look great on paper but have too many elements and assume the basics are in place like great data, systems etc - they are not! - Bad decision making tops down and then blaming lower levels for mistakes despite been warned of risks and then back tracking to try and fix gaps leading to unnecessary work. Listen to the people you hire, you hired them for a reason. Related to this the root causes of problems are ignored and often the solution is to layoff and fire (secretly or otherwise) and believe that a magical new leader will solve all the problems but those leaders rarely make progress for long because they aren't able to address the foundational issues. - While I genuinely believe the C level tries to be transparent and invests a lot in comms they just miss the mark and always come off as overly positive while sugarcoating things and hiding or glossing over numbers. The team are not dumb and see though it and it loses trust. Company needs a new north star and vision and someone who can inspire and be genuine. - Only my personal opinion but Personio is a prime candidate for acquisition at best and PE takeover at worst so be aware of this if joining and don't put too much weight into equity.