Not a good place to work in Product at every level of seniority
Pros
- Well known brand and great image from the outside - Manageable workload - High potential product impact (countries, customers...) - New CEO and willingness to improve current situation - Company progressively shifting from a paternalistic company to a global company, more open on the outside, and adopting global best practices. But it will take years, especially with averse to change culture - Recently started and accelerated recruitment of top execs and experts from outside Decathlon Investing in digital transformation and change management - Global strategy gives great hope, but will hit the wall of operational excellence to be delivered
Cons
- Lack of excellence and expertise (HR, Strat, Management, Product...) with cascading and systemic impacts -Low product maturity: lack of product emulation, management, culture, best practices. Focus on delivery over discovery. Not a digital company yet, even less a product one. - Outdated culture: siloed from the rest of the industry and the world, as they used to only recruit internally, in France, in Lille - High debt: Tech, product, data, orga... Averse to change Complex and large organisation - Most people have 10 to 20 years of XP at Decat and experience was historically preferred over expertise. So lack of opportunities to grow, recognition, autonomy for decision making... - Salary and package are not competitive, ~15% below market - One of the lowest spender in HR benefits in product, so almost no benefits (ie: ~3€ lunch card/day after 6 months) - Not good regarding inclusivity and diversity - Witnessed systemic bad practices leading to multiple people quitting in a few months - Historically centralised in Lille, bad remote policy and culture. Parisian office is just a coworking space both literally and figuratively. Most people there are individually working with teams based in Lille, not together. So they mostly don't know each other, don't work together, need to interact with Lille on a daily basis (phone calls, meetings...). Office isn't fit for this (open space with lack of rooms). And the atmosphere suffers from this situation, not welcoming at all. And there is almost no budget or initiatives undertook to improve this (ie: team building). In addition, most team building activities and work related benefits are localised in Lille campuses. - Outdated ways of working - Stuck in digital transformation and change management