Native Instruments reviews about "communication"

First and foremost, it’s structures and decision making. The Exec Board and CEO are unwilling to let go of the least bit of control. Even after Agile development methods and Scrum had been introduced to resolve some of the severe project management issues NI had at the time, decisions were still made top-down (i.e., by the CEO and CTO). With their hands tied, product owners had no chance to steer their boat. This is frustrating not only for the product owner but also for the team. After noticing there was no instant gratification to be expected from Agile methods (because they were blocked by fixed deadlines and unexpected paradigm changes by the top management), the CTO decided to try a new approach called Objectives and Key Results (OKRs). From what I heard, it doesn’t work too well. Second, there was and is no proper communication. There is no vision, no mission other than stupid marketing slogans communicated to the employees. Even the department heads did not have a clear idea of where the train was heading, and what the long-term plans were. With no vision I could relate to, it was incredibly difficult for me to lead a team of individuals who had no clue what the big picture was. When reporting to my line manager, I noticed that bad news (e.g., deadlines that could not be met because the team was way understaffed) were filtered or interpreted in a way that would hide the actual problems. Third, some of the directors and managers are not qualified to fill their position, and their main focus is on hiding this from their supervisor. As someone who had to manage a team under the most adverse conditions, it was hard to trust a person who did not understand my struggle nor support me in any way because he (or she) was busy overplaying his (or her) incompetence. I could go on, but you probably get the idea.

Uncertain decisions of the management, 100 people fired in one day, people laid off after one-month working (better not hiring next time guys), new management not related to the music world (no producers, musicians or DJs, just business), unclear communication and people avoiding questions.

International communication sometimes is a bit slow

-salary & perks way below average -outdated tech stack -very limited career perspectives -lack of proper top down communication -strategy changes every week -although diversity on staff level decisions are made by middle-aged white men only - glass ceiling like in a text book -office has no AC - times get pretty hard in summer

No clear vision or the vision is extremely poorly transmitted from top down to the teams. Politics play a huge role and there are lots of opposing parties. Yearly organizational changes done with poor or incomplete communication. Middle management preoccupied only in saving their job and blaming their lack of vision on the people below. Many of them have absolutely no clue about how to do their job but have a good survival instinct. Lower than average compensation with no internal salary grids. It is a true corporate jungle.

In my personal experience, toxic company culture that fostered: - Buddy system/favoritism (leading to set-up-to-fail confirmation bias) - Poor boundaries and their breakdown over time - Work/life boundaries seen as lack of commitment or discontentment - Disempowering systems, dysfunction, and confusion as norm - Burnout, constantly ill employees - Toxic positivity, passive aggression, dishonest and passive communication - Healthy, direct communication perceived as offensive, hurtful, or problematic - Discrimination on multiple levels (I ignored the many racism/sexism claims online only to find out how pervasive they are) - Performative activism that doesn't support true inclusion - Fixed mindset that resists meaningful growth

- There are some "sacred cows" in the company's management positions whose opinion on a project is out of all question - If you are not sucking up to the "sacred cow" of your department your opinion or actions might not be taken into account, no matter how factual they are - The communication among departments was not transparent. I'm pretty sure they've solved this by now - Some key processes were implemented too slow - No option to work remotely - No option for flexible working hours - Salary (2014) slightly below market

Since a couple of months, there is a new (top) management team in place (they call themselves "Executives", I would rather call them FLOP Management). This new management team is totally incompetent and highly overrated, and their contribution to the company so far has been the unnecessary layoff of good people (people get 10 minutes to clean their desk!!). The other contribution of this "Management" is ZERO. Looking at their CVs, they stay on average between 6 months and 2 years in a company. The only communication they do, is prepared by an external PR company and uses a lot of expensive words but is totally useless (if you want to know the kind of communication, read the company reactions on the previous postings here at Glassdoor: alligned blabla; strategy blabla; vision blabla; company goals blabla; transformation blabla, blablablablabla). The management team doesn´t even understand the basics of business, let alone of the music industry, and they probably never made any meaningful contribution in their life. But they have an ego from Berlin to LA and back (probably comparable to their salary). With this management team, Native Instruments will be gone very soon (signs are already becoming very clear).