Inconsistent leadership but great place to learn - Sales Development Representative (SDR) Personio Employee Review

2.0
25 Mar 2022
Recommend
CEO approval
Business outlook

Pros

Great people, team environment, lot's of learning opportunities and exposure to sales (you will really learn a lot)! Start-up environment, perks are decent and there's plenty of team nights out - my team was the best part of my time in Personio. The product is very good, along with the marketing so the brand is known in Europe. Really liked the location of the office in Dublin & liked that Personio made a big effort to bring the entire team together in Munich last year!

Cons

Some of these are part of working in a start up but for me, these were the biggest reasons why I left Personio. Firstly, it's extremely difficult to hit targets - the salary is good but not if you can't actually get your full OTE without completely sacrificing work life balance. Targets are very high and there is no "ideal customer profile" in Personio because they believe every SMB will want to buy, which is simply not the case. Leadership is massively inconsistent. Personio has a very young workforce and most people are their first "X" job so they're learning on the job. My manager was great, I learned a lot during my time there & got training and feedback that still helps me today in my new SD role. However, my manager had limited time due to the number of people on my team since Personio is growing so fast and as a result, sometimes I felt that I was taking too much time if I needed help outside of our weekly calls. Inconsistent promotion criteria - this was huge on the SD team and I have friends that also experienced this in other departments. Some people did not hit their targets but got promoted to AE roles, other people got VERY similar results and were actually let go. How was this justified? It wasn't. It seems to be that if it suits Personio, because an AE role needs to be filled, even low performers will get promoted. BUT if you're not hitting those impossible targets and there's nowhere for you to go, then you'll be let go - research this on LinkedIn, it's quite visible.

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Personio Response
4y
Hello, and thank you for this feedback! Creating an excellent employee experience is our top priority, and feedback like this is a great opportunity for us to continue to improve.We have received feedback about targets and are already implementing changes to ensure our teams have a healthy work-life balance. Similarly, we have decreased the number of direct reports that our team leads are managing in order to give them more time to support their teams. And we’ve also listened to feedback about our promotion system and are currently designing a completely new framework to ensure fair, equal, and unbiased promotion experiences for all Personios. If you’d like to provide more feedback, we’re very open to hearing it! Just send me an email at cassandra.hoermann@personio.de.

Explore other reviews about Personio

5.0
14 Oct 2025
Recommend
CEO approval
Business outlook

Pros

My coworkers are wonderful, I feel energized coming to work everyday

Cons

The company has had a lot of churn at Director+ levels, not a clear vision across the company

1.0
30 Oct 2025
Recommend
CEO approval
Business outlook

Pros

Smart collaborative colleagues at the lower IC levels.

Cons

Personio is a dying company. The over-complexity of the company's technical systems is comical. Every attempt to simplify seems to lead to more complexity as things get half migrated and left to rot. Engineering leadership seems clueless and unable to present a clear plan-of-action to get things on track. Principal engineers force engineering time to be spent on silly projects that don't move the needle long-term. There is an overall aversion to taking the time to learn deeply about systems being used. Personio feels like a combination of all of the negatives of both a startup and a mature tech company, with none of the positives. The tech is half assed and duct taped together, but still somehow everything moves at a glacial pace. There is a mass shared delusion at the company that an IPO is in reach. No investor is going to buy this company's junk shares on the open market.

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