1. The leadership team will track your attendance starting from 2024, which is related to the RTO policy they implemented. The CEO explicitly stated in an AEM, "If you don't like RTO, then please find another job." I know of a few people in the company who missed one day in the office and received a verbal warning.
2. Leadership will do whatever they want and whenever they want. An example of this is the 2023 Christmas period when they decided to close down two offices (Berlin and Porto). Some people did receive a reallocation package, but many did not. Those who did were reallocated to different teams.
3. Reorgs are done regularly. During my time at Checkout, I was part of three reorgs. This means that if a team is not fully cut, they most likely will have different priorities, introducing a lot of friction. I know a manager who lost 50% of his team and was then moved to another department and team.
4. Every six months, you will be part of a review cycle. The CEO implemented stack ranking (Amazon style), promoting a toxic company culture. This is because someone in your team must get a 2 (bottom of the rank). When I first joined Checkout.com, this ranking system wasn't in place. This meant that if you were performing at the next promotion level, you would get promoted. Also, if you were lucky to get promoted, rest assured your salary increase wouldn't be the best. If you are planning to join the company, try to negotiate a higher salary from the start, as any subsequent salary increase as part of promotions will be disappointing.
5. Due to the reasons stated above, many people are leaving from various departments. You can expect delays from other teams when you need to work together to get features out. This is also due to the fact that every team is trying to achieve allocated OKRs (which are meant to be super ambitious, as the CEO puts it, but you can already guess what happens if you miss them).
6. The office itself is a bit crowded at times (probably something to do with the RTO 🤷), so finding rooms for in-person meetings can be challenging. You may still end up doing meetings over Zoom, which defeats the purpose of RTO.
7. Customer first is one significant thing the leadership team abides by, and this shows as employee morale and voice are ignored at every step of the way. This is reflected in the Peakon score for the company, which is now not even spoken about as the score is very low.
