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> In Germany, Mr Samwer is a hero and a role model. Not at all -- entirely the opposite. Samwer is a high-pressure boss, well known for treating his reports a

> In Germany, Mr Samwer is a hero and a role model. Not at all -- entirely the opposite. Samwer is a high-pressure boss, well known for treating his reports and employees with belligerence and hostility. That attitude trickles down to the leaders he places in his shell companies. Rocket-family companies demand the long hours commensurate with typical SV startups, but pay developers below-market salaries, and provide negligible to no equity. They're notorious for shoveling a lot of core business work onto a huge, rotating cast of systemically-underpaid interns. I won't get started on the state of their (universal, mandatory) tech stack. It's actually an adage among devs in Berlin: to studiously avoid anything in the Rocket universe.

andreasklinger 11y ago
I feel like i need to make a comment just to re-emphasize how incorrect that statement by FT is.
FlyingSnake 11y ago
This guy speaks the truth. I chuckled at that line too. Rocket Internet is toxic and their culture is poisonous. They tend to copy the hilariously worst ideas from Silicon Valley and believe that only hustle and posing will lead you to success. People outside Germany should stop glamorizing them.
- adventured 11y ago
  What are some examples of the worst ideas from Silicon Valley that they've copied?
  - FlyingSnake 11y ago
    From top of my head: * Noisy Open Offices. * The notion that real devs stay in office at least till 19:00 * Clueless technical staff. Hodgepodge of Scala, Java, Clojure, Groovy running on microservices/Docker/Hadoop/WhatsThatCurrentFad * Below market salaries. There was an uproar in Zalando open house that some Sr. Devs are paid less than Jr. Devs. * Interns as underpaid minions. One Rocket company even had the interns do the dirty dishes, clean kitchen and check on toilets.
    - adventured 11y ago
      I'm confused. Are you claiming that they copied paying below market salaries and having clueless technical staff from Silicon Valley? I honestly wasn't aware that clueless technical staff was a common plight in SV (such that someone like Rocket would emulate it). That some developers or companies get caught up in fads, certainly wouldn't inherently indicate that they're clueless. Maybe I'm behind the times on this. Is Silicon Valley now regarded as being filled full of low quality / clueless engineers? And what location has replaced SV as the best in the world?
      - FlyingSnake 11y ago
        What I meant is that they try to copy latest technological fad from SV and try to implement it half-assedly. They see Microservices/Golang/React trending on HN and try to do it by using underpaid engineers. SV is and will be a leader in technology for a foreseeable future.
doczoidberg 11y ago
There exists also a very critical documentation about Samwer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1dpqb2H-snA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1dpqb2H-snA He described himself as the "most aggressive man on the internet, even planet", compared business to "blitzkrieg" etc. Rocket internet is a copy shop. Some rocket websites even had the name of the copied companies in their legal notices. Nothing innovative, mostly online shops.

andreasklinger 11y ago

I feel like i need to make a comment just to re-emphasize how incorrect that statement by FT is.

FlyingSnake 11y ago

This guy speaks the truth. I chuckled at that line too. Rocket Internet is toxic and their culture is poisonous. They tend to copy the hilariously worst ideas from Silicon Valley and believe that only hustle and posing will lead you to success. People outside Germany should stop glamorizing them.

adventured 11y ago
What are some examples of the worst ideas from Silicon Valley that they've copied?
- FlyingSnake 11y ago
  From top of my head: * Noisy Open Offices. * The notion that real devs stay in office at least till 19:00 * Clueless technical staff. Hodgepodge of Scala, Java, Clojure, Groovy running on microservices/Docker/Hadoop/WhatsThatCurrentFad * Below market salaries. There was an uproar in Zalando open house that some Sr. Devs are paid less than Jr. Devs. * Interns as underpaid minions. One Rocket company even had the interns do the dirty dishes, clean kitchen and check on toilets.
  - adventured 11y ago
    I'm confused. Are you claiming that they copied paying below market salaries and having clueless technical staff from Silicon Valley? I honestly wasn't aware that clueless technical staff was a common plight in SV (such that someone like Rocket would emulate it). That some developers or companies get caught up in fads, certainly wouldn't inherently indicate that they're clueless. Maybe I'm behind the times on this. Is Silicon Valley now regarded as being filled full of low quality / clueless engineers? And what location has replaced SV as the best in the world?
    - FlyingSnake 11y ago
      What I meant is that they try to copy latest technological fad from SV and try to implement it half-assedly. They see Microservices/Golang/React trending on HN and try to do it by using underpaid engineers. SV is and will be a leader in technology for a foreseeable future.

doczoidberg 11y ago

There exists also a very critical documentation about Samwer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1dpqb2H-snA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1dpqb2H-snA He described himself as the "most aggressive man on the internet, even planet", compared business to "blitzkrieg" etc. Rocket internet is a copy shop. Some rocket websites even had the name of the copied companies in their legal notices. Nothing innovative, mostly online shops.