Pros
Wide range of benefits (e.g., dental which is uncommon and a big plus), top-notch equipment, and the option to work from home.
Cons
The biggest issues with Aiven stem from its incredibly political, competitive, and overall toxic culture that’s been worsening over time, especially after the layoffs at the beginning of 2023 and the induction of new senior "leaders" in the company. You can see the cultural problems manifest day-to-day, for example, when people obsess over highlighting their accomplishments—to the extent that there's more competition than collaboration. When things don't go well, people resort to torturing the data and twisting their KPIs to “prove” impact no matter what, rather than reporting the full truth and learning what does vs. doesn't work. The reason for this obsession with self-promotion and impression management is the general lack of organizational trust. People do not believe that simply "doing good work" will be recognized and rewarded fairly—and they are correct, as promotions, layoffs, and even hiring decisions are made in complete secret in the most top-down, non-meritocratic manner possible. Furthermore, when mid-level employees produce work for senior management, the output is often delivered by a middle manager who didn’t do any of the actual work but is happy to take the credit. Even the smaller day-to-day communications are made over DMs and private channels, as team members are insecure about making their work transparent on public channels. Openness is touted as one of the company’s core values, yet one can be reprimanded for pointing out the technical limitations or mistakes present in other people’s work. Simply put, all of this is the symptom of an ineffective leadership style at the very top of the org chain, cascading its way downwards to cement a toxic culture, breeding distrust among employees, and reinforcing counterproductive behaviors. When all the big internal decisions affecting people’s careers are handled by either a secret club or just a single person (CEO), and when credit is given to the loudest mouths, how can you expect employees to not behave so politically?