Backbase Software Engineer reviews

- Chaotic structure sold internally as flat hierarchy. Reality is that it's not flat, and not a hierarchy. It's all very messy. - The amount of competition and stress is unbearable. This company seems to attract only people who are workaholics and must prove themselves worthy to the management and superior to colleagues all the time. If you're not this kind of person stay away. - Incompetent management, they use a lot of buzzwords and corporate canned slogans without worrying too much about the actual reality nor what they actually mean. - Employees are treated as nothing more but parts of the machine. There is no humanity in this company, taking more that 2 days off for sickness is seen as damaging the company and you will feel the judgement of others around you. - People constantly leave for the same reason, they see less skilled colleagues being promoted. - The free lunch is of very bad quality, many time I had to be careful and avoid expired products. - The main Amsterdam office is in a glass building, during the summer the whole place turns into an oven (~30 degrees) and there is no air conditioning, because it's broken and "cannot be repaired". - Interviewing people results sometimes in rejected candidates being hired anyway. The recruitment process is very shady.

- Incredibly high turnover in the company. Some people just disappear and you have no idea what happened to them. Lots of nice and smart guys left company in recent months. - Criticism between teams and inside teams as well, that makes working atmosphere very unpleasant and toxic to work. - No technical growth at all - applying new techniques and frameworks almost impossible. Very bureaucracy environment. - Lots of technical debts after every release. A lot of them are still not resolved and no one really cares about them. - A lot of miscommunication between departments inside company HR <-> Finance. - People are treated as “corks” to fill the gap in sinking boat. - Salary below average in Amsterdam (tbh other company also offer not much higher salaries). - High workload for some people. If someone quits the volume of work is still the same and you have to work for that guy as well. Caution for people who wants to apply for this company: Local (Dutch) people won’t work for this salary. Freelancers/contractors are too expensive. So you guys are the last chance, last hope for them. After entering the company you’ll nicely fill the gap in the boat as a "cork" - managers are happy. Every month they import dozens of new "corks" from all over the world trying to keep the boat floating. What about you? Who really cares about the ”cork”. If the “cork” is old or it can’t fill the gap properly it will be replaced by another fresh one. If you respect yourself think twice before applying here. Be mindful - don’t waste your life here.