Goodbye, TomTom.

I have this rule when blogging that as I don’t give away my real identity, just snippets of it, I protect the identity of those I blog about at all costs; until you don’t show any respect for me what so ever. Those who have followed this blog, and my Twitter timeline, for a while now have probably noticed I haven’t been too happy about my recent employer. You can kind of consider this as an open letter to that company and also a way for me to show that my frustration was legit, and not yet another disgruntled employee.

I started working for TomTom beginning of last year. I was excited, as always when I start a new job. I love learning something new to broaden my knowledge. Just the first days I was told I shouldn’t take the job too serious and that I shouldn’t stay for too long. It was okay in the beginning, as it was a typical call-centre job. Answering calls and emails, helping customers with their technical problems.
I don’t remember when it started going downhill for me, but it was a mix between poor management and poor product and software development.

What I learned working at TomTom for over one year is that software testing seems to be non-existant there. They add more and more features to their software, on the device and for your computer software and make minor “fixes”; but still those who work at customer support, technical support or customer care (depends who you ask at TomTom) have to troubleshoot issues that even the developers don’t know why they are happening, or how to solve them. Some technical support agents get so good at technical troubleshooting a TomTom they know more than the technicians at TomTom.

TomTom has a small team of technicians who should be there to help and assist those who are in direct contact with the customer. The problem I had with the technicians is that, if you look past that they had access to more information than I had, I had more knowledge and experience with technical troubleshooting. It was at least how it felt. When you constantly solve issues by yourself or with co-operatin with a customer, you lose faith in someone claiming to be a technician very quickly.
If someone is a higher ranking technician than me, I demand that they know more than me.

You get told you can tell someone in management anything and that if you have suggestions they will take it into consideration. I went to different people to try to give advice on how to improve TomTom, not just as a product, but also as a company. Now I understand I was just throwing pearls before swine. I even wrote reports and had several suggestions on how to do things differently, based on my experience working for Adobe and Tele2. When I left TomTom they hadn’t done anything I suggested.
One person in management said that we should do what ever someone higher up tells us to do, even if we don’t like it. Some even suggest you to lie or twist the tuth to get the customer off the phone.
A company with an attitude like that is not a company I’m willing to work for.

I learned a lot working for TomTom, but sadly it was how I should not run a company. I know very few employees there  who are happy working for TomTom. If you have a successful company, you should only have a handful unhappy employees (there’s always someone who is unhappy about something).
I want to work for a company that I can suggest someone else to work for, and I want to be able to suggest that product to everyone. I can’t suggest anyone to work for TomTom based on my experience and what I’ve seen it does to people working there. I can’t even suggest people to buy a TomTom based on not only the faults you might have with it, but how much grief you must go through to have it fixed; and what TomTom tries to hide from the users.

I don’t know what I will be working with in Australia, but I might try to find small business, rather than a big international company who just want to earn money. I want to work for someone who take care of their employees and customers.

I hope you enjoyed the read. I might post a few more articles about TomTom, but I’m finished there so I’m not too interested on moaning about the past; but I do feel I have an obligation to let people know the truth.

Qui audet adipiscitur!

Note: This article was inspired by the post by Douglas Bowman, Goodbye, Google. It made me understand that you can and should be ablle to write a critical article about your previous employer. It’s called freedom of speech.
I’m also not affiliated with TomTom anymore and this article is my opinion, my contract with TomTom has ended and I have left the Nehterlands, which means I have no legal obligations towards TomTom.