The freedom you will feel in your first day has its darker side:
The company is proud of being “opportunist”: The company seems to prefer to not commit to ANY choice, in order to stay open to opportunities. This lead to the followings drawbacks:
* Missing great opportunities: Great Opportunities will be identified and never seized because seizing an opportunity always cost some resources and commitment.
* Waisted resources: Everybody is busy working of its own projects, meaning wasted resources due to lack of coordination. Keep in mind that getting approval to work on a project doesn’t mean you will get the means to do it.
The fear of processes makes the company inefficient sometimes, and doing the same mistake again and again. The lack of processes will destroy your ability to focus on what really matter. This lack of focus will damaged your personal ability to learn from failure and limit your impact.
The company doesn’t value experience. In fact, seeking industry experience is seen as to be “conformist” and “applying old methods due to intellectual laziness”. Very few employee have a deep understanding an industry. This means you might improve on technical understanding, but not on business understanding. EURA NOVA praised itself in being “innovative” because they “dare new things”, sometimes with no plan how to exploit these experiences. Daring new things for the sake of it isn’t innovative, it is just a waste of resources.
You are expected to improve and to continually learn (without any raise, remember ;-p!). But objectives are elusively defined. The pressure around continuous grow and the lack of SMART (specific, measurable, achievable, relevant and time bounded) objectives can lead to harassment.
However, training/feedback provided might be difficult to use, due to absence of structure, wrong timing, tainted with believes and biases, on non-professional aspects etc. It can be counterproductive as well, as the trainer sometimes lacks the experience and the necessary distance to make it ready to use / applicable to your situation.
The company culture makes difficult to keep private and professional life separated, as mixing the 2 is seen as a sign of involvement. Some people would want you to grow on a personal level too, and they think they are allowed to make comments that should have stayed out of the office (illegal and ethically unacceptable comments about your private life).
There is an ugly side to working there. The best way I can put it is: this workplace is ethically compromised. On so many levels: Lies and false promises. Non inclusive workplace (if you are not a man, run away. You will never belong of the boy club). Harassment. No sense of human decency whatsoever. Work there for too long and you will lose your moral compass. “Strange behaviour” will become the new normal.
The workplace is non inclusive : A lot of dick jokes/joke that are offensive for women/unsolicited jokes about female employee sexuality. If you raise your voice saying it makes you uncomfortable, nothing will change and you will be described as “having no sense of humour”.
There is harassment: Non stopping comments about you as a person. They said it is feedback.
---- Conclusion ----
I would recommend you to run away if you can afford it. In case you can not, think twice. Really check other options. If you choose to accept the offer, build a way out as fast as you can (keep in touch with recruiter in your area, go to networking events, save some money…). Copy every documents to a personal and safe storage( personal email address, personal computer, etc...).
