Checkout.com

Salary is average for the industry, but it's a good environment for a person that wants to learn on the job, using new tech, but that's about it. After a year or so, you will feel frustrated about the whole mentality and culture, and you would go and find a better job.

When starting at Checkout, it's like being handed a deck of cards and you need to choose your hand.

You might get lucky and draw some good cards, placed in a good team, with good leadership. Or you can get the complete opposite.

The latter is my experience. I was put in a team where you are labelled not based on your skills and knowledge, but how you are able to interact with the higher-ups. If you are a "yes man," you will fit right in. If you have concerns around design, implementation, or estimation, you are viewed as someone who is not a team player.

While I was there, leadership was non-existent. There was no goal setting, no regular one-on-ones. My manager was clueless or not interested in constructive two-way feedback. For example, there were no 360-degree reviews while I was there; you could not review your manager.

Because of that, your salary increase, your promotions, and the work you were doing were directly tied to how much you were liked by your immediate line manager. That's a lot of politics, and it's not limited to just your line manager.

The hierarchy is completely messed up. All they are looking for are Senior Engineers, as if they have a fear of hiring mid-level developers that can be trained or grown in-house. It's mostly because they don't have a strategy for growth or even individual training budgets.

While I was there, I received no formal training (external or internal), and you had to fight for the tools that actually helped you do your job. Because they label themselves as a FinTech company, a start-up environment, they will hide behind this facade to not have proper processes in place when you have an issue.

Lately, they have introduced OKRs, leadership training, and maybe training budgets. But I wouldn't get my hopes high. The same sort of people will maintain their status and position and will do the same thing, regardless, because that's what they know will work.

And the last thing: there is a running joke amongst the employees to ask about how the bonus calculation is made. Many colleagues have asked about this and received vague answers about performance and promises of transparency which never materialize. Yet, bonuses always seem to be the same percentage of salary for everyone, regardless of performance.