Pros
The company starts off with handing you a laptop and one of the latest smartphones to use with unlimited data. You get introduced to every team and people are generally nice the first weeks. They mentor you well and then lets you do your own work. So they are good are bringing new people in to the company. Some other pros are that they offer flexible working hours (well, sort of. more about it below in cons) and they also have a very relaxed office. It's not often you see people stressed and people are generally nice and helpful to everybody. They offer a free breakfast sandwich every morning, and during the day there are two breaks. One break from 10.00-10.30, lunch at 12.00-13.00 and another break at 15.00-15.30. During the breaks you can play ping pong, chat with colleagues near the coffee machines, go to the in-house gym, play pool, play console games, etc. The HQ is located just outside the city so there's barely traffic there, as opposed to in the city centre. Takes about 10 minutes by car from just about anywhere in the city to reach the office.
Cons
While there may be "perks" such as flexible working hours, it's really not something you get to use. The teams are lead by so-called "Delivery Managers" who are clearly not used to the Centiro work spirit. They tend to be older (in their 40's) and very oftenly they bring their habits from their past jobs to Centiro, which is very different in most cases. We are not allowed flexible working hours. In fact, when we do try to use the so-called "perks" they are very happy to promote during the interviews, they question us. In the contract we signed it was stated we do have flexible working hours as well as a work-life-balance. But this is far from the actual truth. These perks are only given to people who have worked there for a very long time (8+ years). Most others have to bring up arguments as to why we should we allowed to i.e. have flexible working hours and work from home/abroad. Some delivery managers tend to think they are above the rest of employees, although this is a "flat organization". They think of themselves as bosses. But that's not what they should be doing. Instead they should organize projects for us, guide us and encourage us to try new things. We as employees are pretty much stuck in same place for years. Once you're good at something, it's hard to try something different because they are afraid that if you switch team or try something else, you may be the only one with knowledge in that particular area, so they try keep you there as long as possible. I watched a video on YouTube prior to applying for Centiro. Everybody was smiling, they showed the CEO having discussions with employees on a daily basis, saying good morning and just talking - as if it was a flat organization. It's far from the truth. I've maybe said "hi" to the CEO and other in the higher ups about 3 times during 3 years at Centiro. They no-longer know whats going on in the teams because they stopped interacting (assuming they used to, in the past). It gives a sense of a hierarchy, just like any other company. I don't see anything "flat" about this organization at all. Sure, we get to bring up ideas on projects - but the decision has to be made by incompetent delivery managers who 90% of the time only sit on meetings with each others & new employees, instead of actually caring about their teams. They also bring in a bunch of incompetent people. During end of 2016 and forward, they nearly tripled the amount of employees. It went too fast. There's people who sit and work in the database with no SQL knowledge what-so-ever and most people do not know anything (not even the slightest) about logistics. At least 75% of the company studied the same 2 programs at the University of Borås: IT-Technician (IT-Tekniker) and Systems Science (Systemvetenskap). They all have the same knowledge (and it's not a lot, in most cases). So with no variety in skills, it becomes a total mess. Sometimes you have 5 on-going projects at once that needs to be done, but people generally don't test their stuff before publishing it in the so-called "Code Releases". And each time there are more bugs than last time. With a shortage of software developers (due to the low pay), the Application Specialists tend to "help" the developers. They make one test and say "that's it! it's working! publish it!", and then comes hell - because nothing works and the customers keeps complaining. I think they should get rid of all old-fashioned people who bring their old habits from completely different organizations. They should adapt to the Centiro spirit, not the opposite. They see flexible working hours - or working from abroad/home - as being lazy. While in fact, most colleagues I've spoken to proves the opposites. When people can have that actual relaxed seriousness and work-life-balance, they become more productive than ever. Everyone at the company understands we are working in teams, but for a team to work, we must also look at the individuals and their needs. If a person works better with flexible hours, then let her/him do that whenever, otherwise it is not flexible. They should revamp the entire job ad and remove the youtube videos, because almost none of that is true. Especially not the "daily schedule" of an application specialist that's on their website. It could not be farther from the truth.
