Backbase reviews

3.1

45% would recommend to a friend

(127 total reviews)
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Jouk Pleiter

52% approve of CEO

38% positive business outlook

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127 reviews

Reviews about "Culture"

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2.0
Dec 30, 2014

Great people, but poor management holding back the company

Anonymous employee
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

Many highly skilled and smart professionals make this an interesting place to work, learning from peers, technically inspiring. Good atmosphere on the work floor, folks are kind and very supportive of each other. Good support from HR, flexibility to deal with personal circumstances.

Cons

The company is too much sales/opportunity-driven to make this a sustainable product development organization. R&D is suffering the most: no product vision, no attention for technical debt, no consistent roadmap. Only one good product manager on board which is not enough for all the Scrum teams. Roles keep on changing, unclear/mixed responsibilities, micromanagement from the top down. Due to all this, attrition is incredibly high; it seems they can only get people from abroad where they don't know the company's reputation yet. Such a pity because the product and the technical staff provide a lot of potential.

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Backbase Response
11y
Want to let you know that I do share your concern about the challenges. 2014 was not a really good year for some RnD teams. So what are we doing to make things better in 2015: 1) we have simplified the organisation into two Tribes: the CXP and the DBP tribe - and within these Tribes autonomous squads, 2). On the tech side there is great new stuff happening within the CXP team, preparing the 6.0 architecture - just check-in with BartdH of Niels for an update. And on the DBP side, that team is doing really cool stuff - both server (micro-services / dockersrs) and client side (angular - web components) - check in with guys like Bennie, Dragos and Ben to get an update. 3). We are making steady progress in improving the management structure - ask Joost or Maiia. I have coffees with a lot of people in Backbase that have ideas or concerns. Just ping me and we can chat in person - and see how we can improve things. Thanks! Jouk
3.0
Dec 1, 2014
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

You work in an international atmosphere with people who are (mostly) nice, very bright and good at what they do. No intradepartmental infighting, open and friendly culture. Nice office space, nice lunch facilities, good work/life balance, good facilities (laptops, screens etc) to do your work. Freedom to work from home if you need to (in case of partner/child sickness, etc). Office located in the center of Amsterdam, easy to reach by public transport or by car, although the paid parking is hideously expensive.

Cons

Lack of direction and focus, no sense of appreciation, bad to no communication. Constant shuffling of roles, constant initiatives that start out of thin air, then disappear again without a trace with people being moved in and out of them with no apparent plan. No focus on code quality at all, hack something on top of the existing hacks is the modus operandi. Management has a team on their hands with which they could steamroller the competition but does not seem to know what to do with it. In the last 6 months 8 people walked off, including the QA lead and the second R&D manager inside of 3 years, and as far as I can see all this is treated as business as usual. No one left with more than 3 1/2 years on the team, most have a year or less with the product.

avatar
Backbase Response
11y
Thanks for sharing your feedback. Want to let you know that I deeply care and acknowledge that that 2014 was not a great year for some parts of the BACKBASE RnD organisation. I totally agree with you that we have great people / engineers in RnD and that they deserve a strong and solid organisation. Please ping me for a coffee or beers, so we can talk. Would love to personally fill you in on the improvements we are executing now / early 2015. Looking forward. Jouk BTW: there are many team's / units in Backbase that do very well (great atmosphere, great code, getting things done). Its our goals to have all teams do well.
2.0
Sep 10, 2014

Bad product, poor management

Anonymous employee
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

International atmosphere. Young team. Many opportunities to expand knowledge. Decent benefits. Potentially nice product line. Challenging environment.

Cons

Activities in the consulting department mean slinging crap at customers and then cleaning up the mess. Product with no clear vision and no attention to real customer needs. Product management is nearly absent and focuses only on short term needs. Upper management treats employees identical to the customers: fail to deliver on promises and just keep lying until they're bled dry. This leads to a huge knowledge and a long line of angry customers. Only positive information on the net you can find about this company is from their own website. The fact that staff reviews here mention they "do not want to share" the cons should be a red flag too.

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