The Meister team is constantly growing, and there are plenty of great opportunities for RoR developers who are looking for new adventures! If you’re thinking about applying and want to know what life is like as a MeisterLobster, read on...
The Products - Our Pride and Joy
Meister is the developer of two award-winning productivity tools. Our flagship product, MindMeister, was released in 2007. With one of the first SaaS solutions in Europe and the very first completely web-based mind map editor, we were a pioneer in the field and quickly became a market-leader in collaborative online mind mapping. We soon added native iOS and Android apps to complement the web version and let people take their mind maps with them on the go. MindMeister is of course made with Ruby on Rails.
In 2015, we launched MeisterTask, our collaborative online task manager. Although we entered a very competitive market, MeisterTask quickly gathered a cult-like following due to its beautiful design, its practical task automations, and its integration with MindMeister, which lets users go directly from brainstorming to project management. MeisterTask also runs on Ruby on Rails on the backend, whereas the frontend, after a big rewrite done last year, now has a completely new tech stack based on React & Redux.
The Team
Meister was founded in 2006 by Michael Hollauf and Till Vollmer, two Austrian techies who saw a market gap with great potential and simply decided to try and fill it. Much more than two pretty faces, Michael and Till are very hands-on with the products to this day. The rest of our team is made up of about 35 people from all over the world. While many of us do speak German, our official company language is English, so German is not a requirement for most positions. A few MeisterLobsters are based in the US; however, the biggest part of our team, including all developers, work at the brand-new Meister HQ in Vienna.
Office Life
Meister HQ is located directly on Mariahilfer Straße and surrounded by countless lunch and shopping opportunities. Spread out over two floors, the modern office has lots of quiet niches for people to do some focused work on their own, as well as plenty of rooms to meet and brainstorm with colleagues. Three kitchens, a big lunch area and a garden provide enough space to prepare and enjoy meals together. In summer, our freezers are full of ice cream, while an unlimited supply of coffee and sweets is available all year around.
Although our core working hours are between 10 a.m. and 4 p.m., you’ll find that MeisterLobsters often stay a little longer than necessary, which might be due to the pool table, the fully stocked bar, and the game room featuring a PS4, a Wii, and lots of board games.
Health and Fitness
We know that people’s productivity is heavily influenced by their overall health, both physically, mentally and emotionally. And while we take pride in being dedicated to our work, we also make sure to keep our (work) life sustainable in every way. This starts by understanding people’s individual needs and finding ways to accommodate them. Some of us are parents who need to pick up their children from daycare at a certain time, while others need to work from home one day a week or simply start their workday an hour later than the rest of us. Whatever it is, we’re committed to making things work, because we know that it keeps our team members happy and able to focus.
MeisterLobsters are a pretty sporty bunch overall, which is why we’ve made room in our calendar for bi-weekly team runs as well as in-house yoga sessions with a personal yoga teacher. Many of us also go bouldering after work and skiing in winter. But if you’re not big on working out, don’t worry - none of these activities are compulsory, and there are plenty of other ways for you to bond with the rest of the team.
Career Development
At Meister, we’re not just looking to grow in terms of team size, we’re also committed to growing and developing each team member individually. First and foremost, we encourage employees to get to know themselves better, including their strengths and weaknesses. For this, we combine employee self-reflection with managerial assessment. Based on the outcome of this process we are able to provide opportunities for training in certain areas, or facilitate collaboration between team members. During our regular employee talks, we also discuss potential areas of growth for team members, to show how we could see their roles developing, in line with Meister’s overall company direction.
We’ve developed career pathways for each of our employees. As a developer at Meister, you can grow from Junior Developer to Intermediate Developer, to Senior Developer. In a Senior role, you either function as an expert working individually on big features or you can proceed down the leadership path. Either way, Meister is a place where you can try new things, learn from others, take responsibility and shape both our products and your future career.
Are you ready to come on board? Apply now.