Toxic leadership and a culture of incompetence - Software Engineer 2 Adyen Employee Review

Food in the office, annual trips, can't complain about the pay

Limited upward mobility, peers in the industry (Stripe) pay about 50% more

Office - the offices are some of the nicest offices I’ve worked in. Barista on site and pretty good lunch every day. Travel - there is an annual trip to Amsterdam and you can travel through Europe from that. PTO - European time off mindset. You’re able to take a fair amount of time off. Some people - there are some really smart, caring, hardworking people but unfortunately they aren’t in leadership positions. Product - it’s fun to work on the product while it’s still evolving

Leadership - some leaders were there at the right place/right time and the lack of leadership experience is evident. They pawn career growth off entirely onto their reports and their ego gets hurt when their leadership is questioned or feedback is given that they should own more. Instead of taking that feedback, they hand over even more “leadership” tasks to individuals. They barely understand the day to day of their peers and are consistently questioned about what they do. If leaders were having an impact on their reports, there wouldn’t be these questions. It’s better to not voice concerns to your lead cause then you’ll just be on their troublemaker list. Toxic culture - if high school like cliquey culture is your thing, Adyen is for you. There’s a weird gossipy vibe for some teams globally. Along with that, there were times harassment and bullying from leadership was condoned. The heavy drinking culture lead to a number of times things got out of hand and lead to people being put into situations they shouldn’t have had to deal with. Then those same leads were given additional chances to continue the behavior till it cost money. If you see something, it’s better to stay quiet than speak up cause then you will have a target on you. Team members are too afraid to actually voice concerns. Pay - Pay can start pretty good but once you’re in, the pay increases are minimal. Options were a joke compared to previous employers. They want people to work there for “the right reasons” but you can compete a bit more on pay. Growth opportunities - there used to be more of a culture to try new roles and go back which was a positive. More recently, growth opportunities are limited and it’s more of a vibe versus tangible impact. You can bring evidence of work but if the you’re not more extroverted or have more of a pick me energy, you likely won’t move up at Adyen. This can be team specific so ask how growth decisions are made within that team. Leadership doesn’t really have an answer on how these things are measured and just get angry if you ask about it. If you want to coast, this would be the spot for you. Numerous people on the team would comment about working too hard and they were right. Product - stop breaking things with product and make operations pick up the slack.