Ohh this will take a while to write down.
(1) Their Fight-fight-fight philosophy: Everything was prepared in a rush. There were fire-fighting teams, squad teams, and sprints for projects, anything that boosts your Adrenaline so you squeeze yourself as much as possible. This makes you feel that you achieved a lot, but in the end, you have a wobble system that can go obsolete anytime, and a heavy debt for the next person who goes in after you.
(2) Stress and overtime: Yes, a lot of these. They sugar-coat it in the name of "ownership" and "self-motivation". They never admit that they ask you to do overtime. But since your scope of "ownership" covers from Germany to the Moon, there's no way you can finish anything within normal working hours. The funny thing is, after years of hearing complaints about "burn-out", instead of solving the workload problem, the company hired a therapist for employees (hahaha), and she was almost always overbooked.
(3) Salaries and Performance review system: You start with super low pay, they promise to review it every six months. You're not compensated by overtime, but by the so-called "ownership" and visibility, which was only judged by the leads/heads. The results: people fight for attention and choose to work on shiny projects. Once you're the favorite player, you will have really good pay. If not, well, good luck.
(4) Hire and fire: over the time I was there I saw an army of new joiners every month. The company is based in Frankfurt, where there are a lot of good international students from universities. It's hard for those students to find a job if they don't speak German. That's where the company push their bargain, and they pushed HARD. After some time, the employees might feel frustrated and go, this is what most people do. Or they are asked to go. Emma only makes efforts to keep the "A+" players, the rest doesn't matter. Most employees are disposable, you go in, they try to squeeze you as much as possible, and then you're out.
All in all, the employer-employee relationship here is highly imbalanced. Emma is a predator, who is very smart in picking the more vulnerable set of the labor force (foreigners, non-native speakers, and now that they go international, they aim at the lower-income market of course). And then also very smart in creating an illusion of success within the company without a fair compensation framework. So.. think carefully before you apply, and if you're in, try to stay conscious and know your value.
