The company outlook does not look reassuring in certain areas. While there are no imminent risks and global performance is still improving quarter over quarter, as shared transparently in business updates and monthly meetings open to everyone, the situation in Germany feels different. Although global and broader Europe-wide challenges could explain part of this, there appear to be additional structural issues locally that are reflected across sectors and even among rival consulting firms. Promotions are effectively locked and it feels like we have to perform a roleplay game, getting feedbacks, self-evaluations and doing all the rituals for a promotion cycle, only to potentially receive a 1 percent merit increase if they are lucky. The (not so) recent change to integrate bonus payments into the yearly salary for L2 roles felt like the bare minimum rather than a meaningful improvement.
The return to the office is largely pointless when nobody is staffed on the same project in the same location and there are no clients visiting. In many cases there are travel bans due to budget reasons, either from the company or from the clients themselves. There's no "culture" in an open-plan floor with constant echo, where sales, strategy, and product teams are in meetings at the same time as creatives and engineers. No noise canceling is offered. There are some rooms that can be easily booked but this doesn't work when you have to quickly jump in a call and share different screens.
It is nearly impossible to have company visibility if you are working with a client from abroad, even if your manager is within the same account but on a different scope.
Every other negative review you read here is real and has never been addressed, while the positive aspects are highly dependent on seniority level and staffing situation.
The anonymous surveys are not anonymous.
