Deel

Deel offers great compensation for most of the world and a community of really talented engineers.

People are generally responsive, and communication with colleagues is smooth once you get to know everyone on the team.

Where do I start?

If you work as a contractor, you'll find out their business tactic is not the only thing that's aggressive. There's 18 days of PTO, which is under what most countries in Europe offer. You can't take more than 5 (or something around that) national holidays. All of this would be decent, were it not for the policy of requiring special permission from an executive to get more than 3 consecutive days.

The "flexible time" is not for the employee. This is a very important point. The "flexible time" benefits the employer. On my first day I was informed that I should install Slack on my personal phone and be ready to reply at all times, even in the evening. It's not a "fill your calendar with 8 hours of work" situation, it's a "fill your calendar with 8 hours of work and 6 hours of on-call, in case someone needs you".

But well, you're a contractor. I wouldn't normally complain, but I was a contractor for other companies in the past, all of which offered much better terms (like your national holidays being respected, along with consecutive PTO without having special approval).

This is not bad on Deel's part. Just below expectations.

The real mess starts once you start working. I cannot and I will not speak for all teams, since I'm not sure how those are managed, but the team I was part of was incredibly disorganized. Even setting things up to start working is a very long and tedious operation, with things constantly breaking. You have to contact a lot of people before you can even pick up your first task. This can be quite common in a lot of companies, but it was something my manager complained about. "I was taking too long", but in reality it was something that was outside of my control.

Documentation is not kept up to date intentionally since, as they claim, things change continuously and it's not worth it. This is one more thing that will delay you, for which you will be penalized.

The tasks that I was given right off the bat required in-depth understanding of how multiple components operated. I raised this with the team manager, saying it would be better to ease me into understanding the entire project with some smaller tasks, but I was simply told I was wrong for thinking that, and that the team "depends on me".

Well, as I had no say in this, I attempted these tasks. Since I lacked the understanding, I requested help. The people helping me (architects and team leads) were not on the same page. This is how I ended up re-implementing the same feature three times.

And what did management understand from this? Maybe "our team needs to re-evaluate how we design systems together, so that we can produce high-quality work individually", or "it seems like we're going too fast at the moment, maybe we should slow down and review our strategy".

No, the team manager looked at the Jira card, didn't ask for any explanation and simply stated that it's unacceptable to spend 3 weeks on a task.

Throughout all of this, it felt like leadership worked against me. It felt like there was no accountability on their side. My experience has taught me that if those you lead fail, it's your responsibility to offer support and make things right.

The way they "made it right" was by insulting me by claiming I'm not skilled enough at what I do and then firing me.

"It's okay. This space here is for the best of the best, and unfortunately you didn't make the cut."

No questions asked. It was unilaterally established that I'm not good at what I do, and that I'm the problem.

For the readers, keep in mind that I might actually just suck at my job. It's their way of handling employee performance issues that's the problem, not the fact that they called me "stupid".

I would not have these thoughts were it not for my past experiences. I was only fired one other time in my career, but it was a constructive experience. I felt validated, understood and respected, despite the fact that I was literally getting fired.

Deel will offer you a job where it's "survival of the fittest", where there's no respect for your life as an individual and where management has no idea what they're doing. They pay quite well, though.

Management probably invalidated the review the moment I admitted I was classified as "not skilled enough". The management I know thinks it's always right, so to them this is just another frustrated individual that wasn't up to par leaving a negative review.

When someone is under-performing, ask and listen. Find out what they need. Find out why they can't work. You might find some really talented engineers that can work at full "Deel speed" if you listen and make them feel valued as people.