Worst experience in my life - Software Engineer bol Employee Review

1.0
30 May 2020
Recommend
CEO approval
Business outlook

Pros

So much events are organized throughout year (mostly in Dutch)

Cons

I started my career at bol.com in June 2018 and had a traumatic year. I landed to a complete Dutch team, so they all had to switch their communication to English for an international junior. Team members explicitly stated their unwillingness to communicate in English as a great welcome. Team members were very reluctant to cooperate/communicate with me and manager wasn’t very helpful. I started to hear negative feedbacks about me from my manager(I would prefer to receive feedbacks from teammates first) and indeed tried to reflect on feedbacks even if I wasn’t agree. How much ever I worked to be a better engineer, teammates picked up negative situations with a needle and came up with bad feedbacks. For example, I tried to attend to an important meeting with software architects about our team to observe and learn, but I received “losing focus and trying to participate other projects” feedback. My contract was for one year and I wasn’t a citizen of an EU country. I was aware that I had to go back to my country if bol would not extend my contract. At the same time understood that I had no chance in that bullying team and wanted to switch to another team. This request had been blocked by manager by saying “let’s open a new page in new year”. A new manager came and I had good 2 - 3 months. She told me everything is going good and for sure I’d receive an extension; maybe even a permanent contract. At the same time I realized picking up negative situations with a needle feedbacks started again. We had an incident on a software I mostly built (and peer reviewed). All the team except me had meetings about incident and “new way of working” titled meetings. I was explicitly not invited and discriminated in team by not invited to a meeting about team’s way of working. I expressed my dissatisfaction about the situation with my manager and she said “I should focus on my job”. One week after, I was fired out of blue. Moreover, that manager sent a mail about my departure to whole department and stated reason to leave was “low performance”. Thanks god I was able to find another company in a short period of time. It was hard for me to overcome psychological effects I had in bol. I would not advise to anybody such a toxic company like this. Don’t believe to contract extension promises managers give, I’m not the one who left out a small time to find another offer.

Explore other reviews about bol

5.0
5 Mar 2023
Recommend
CEO approval
Business outlook

Pros

Great place to work at

Cons

Nothing bad to say at all

4.0
22 Apr 2026
Recommend
CEO approval
Business outlook

Pros

Great place to work. Workers are treated well Work life balance is respected

Cons

Some days require burning midnight oil and could be stressfull sometimes

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