Pros
Amazing office and benefits, well funded and fair salaries in the beginning. I joined because of all the great talents, motivated people and willingness to make a difference. From the outside the product is positioned well in the market and provides sufficient benefits for its customers.
Cons
No leadership: SumUp tends to “hire” within WHU circles especially when it comes to European / global leadership with little experience and missing openness for diverse thinking or constructive criticism. If challenged, leaderships tends to remove uncomfortable individuals rather than listening to them in order to make positive change. Being direct is used for a continuous excuse of being rude and the general understanding of power imbalance between managers and their reports fails to be understood. Lastly promotions are mostly decided based on relationship rather then expertise and hard work (there is a process for promotions, however this one is tweaked to the respective advantage of the individual) Missing diversity: within Global / European leadership about 80% are white male and German. Female representatives have been put in place for the quota (HR, Marketing, Diversity) however lack edge, impact and inspiration to individual contributors. Working groups to direct change have been set up in order to show change in paper but initiatives are barely implemented. Lack of Strategy: within 3 years at SumUp the organizational structure changed multiple times including significant layoffs while at the same time acquiring companies for +300M USD without properly managing integration into the infrastructure, leading to loss of trust of the people into leadership, to frustration and misalignment. Missing values: it’s ok to admit that SumUp is looking to maximize returns for their investors and that performance is key, however that’s not what is being communicated to the wider org ie. We care and put our team first is one of the values. More than 300 people were laid off globally, only to start rehiring 6 months later, which led to a significant decrease in motivation and productivity and forced the remaining individuals almost into burnouts. Numbers, data, infrastructure: data is not connected and infrastructure only provides 10% of the insights you’d need to understand your business. Decisions are based on false assumptions and are being made by leaders lacking relevant understanding of economic factors and impact their decisions have on their co-workers.
