There are several, this company is basically an episode of black mirror.
I've started to work at smava as a "Junior Web Designer" and after a while my role was changed to "Web/UI Designer". Which in a normal place would mean doing more UI tasks and having an increase in your salary. That never happened, I got not even 30.000 € annually.
I've tried to fix this situation several times but for starters no one knew who was my team leader, later on when finally I've managed to have meetings to discuss this the team leader wouldn't appear. And finally to make this joke even more dramatic they hire a new leader for Designers (which was fired after few months) who just told me I had to wait several months until I get a raise. So my 2 years and half of proven work meant nothing to have a fair salary. Only when I got a new job I was approached with a better salary proposal. A bit too late!
As a UI Designer I've only worked in 3 small projects during my time here. I've only worked in banners for the marketing team until the day I left the company. Basically I was "trapped" in a product team without ever working in anything related with product.
Besides this frustration it was hard to have a design system in this company, if you try to propose designs or give your opinion in why something would not work with the different departments they would just stop to approach you. They would hire their own "individual who knows one thing or two from photoshop" so they don't have to deal anymore with the design department. Which only gives a bad product and different feelings from the brand.
You'll realize that almost everyone is unhappy and frustrated here. Everyone wants to leave, that's the reality of smava.
If you truly love being a Designer just be away from this place, the management really doesn't care about design at all. Their visual ignorance doesn't allow them to understand how their company could benefit from a consistent branding and after a while you'll be frustrated with this reality.
P.S. When you start to work here you receive an employee book to know more about the different departments and obviously the design team isn't even mentioned there or was aware of this project. This shows exactly how much the management cares about their designers.
