Nice people, crap codebase, too many people walking off - Senior Developer Backbase Employee Review

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.

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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.

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