Pros
- Excellent benefits (great healthcare, competitive 401k match w/ full vesting from day 1, generous time off) - Competitive compensation (the majority of employees are highly overpaid so if a generous salary is your objective, this might be the place for you) - A handful of smart people (but not enough to outweigh the highly unintelligent majority)
Cons
A company once ripe with potential and glowing with optimism is now on a very straight and narrow path to self-destruction in the short-term future, mainly due to its porous and inexperienced leadership. This place has slowly but gradually evolved into a complete and utter trainwreck and only gets worse by the day. The communication is absolutely terrible in all facets, internally among US employees and even more so when it comes to communication between the US and the European parent. Employees are given little direction from their line managers (oftentimes because the line manager has just as little knowledge as their direct report) and will often find themselves putting out fires and operating under extreme duress due to the severe lack of communication. Leadership is comprised of executives transplanted from Europe who exhibited no track record of success over there and are mostly unqualified to lead a company on any continent, especially one they have never resided in. They are completely out of touch with the American consumer and the American culture in general, yet they are tasked with saturating the US retail grocery market (good luck with that). The executives are nice enough on a personal level, but clueless when it comes to many facets of the business, yet they continue trudging forward in their confused, misguided stupor. Despite the good benefits and pay, HR is a complete disaster. The vast majority of the group leaves the office before 5 PM (even though business hours are until 6) and are completely useless in the event of any type of employee support. If you complain to employee relations, chances are they will do nothing to help you and might even rat you out to whoever you are complaining about or to management. Legitimate HR functions such as benefits and payroll are outsourced to third-party consultants, so if you have a question regarding anything HR-related you likely will not receive a response until a consultant informs the local HR team of the answer. There are a handful of helpful individuals in the department, but they are few and far between. The group is rather large so you will find it quite puzzling when trying to figure out how they pass their time during the workday. Other departments are not much better. The company is otherwise loaded with mostly 20-somethings who lack relevant work experience and are more concerned with partying and hooking up with their colleagues than they are with making the company a success. There are directors who spend their days browsing the Wall Street Journal, LinkedIn, typing personal emails from their Gmail, and shopping for clothes on Banana Republic and Bonobos while their employees drown in work that has been piled onto them. Since it is not often that anybody in a position of authority has the relevant experience or knowledge to discuss topics of most importance, you often find yourself on an island struggling to work through things and with nobody to bounce ideas off of or brainstorm. There is a running joke at this place that everybody has a shelf life, and that is absolutely the truth. If the company still exists 5 years from now, I would be shocked if 95% of the current employee base is still around, especially the executive board. Lidl has been highly successful across Europe and it is a novel idea to expand into the States, but the execution of it has been far from perfect to say the least. While you will receive good pay and benefits, it will not be long before you find this place to be completely intolerable and are doing everything you can to find an exit.
