Product case study — Austria · 2025

arbeitgeber
check.at

A platform giving employees an honest voice about their workplaces.
Built in 2006 by one person. No investors. No office. Just weekends and an idea worth creating.

Visit arbeitgebercheck.at ↗Who built this →
Funding round
"Coffee and weekends. No VC deck was harmed in the making of this product."
The Problem

Finding a great employer
was a guessing game.

Employees had no reliable way to know what it actually was like at some workplace before accepting a job offer.

In 2006 no other specified platforms for smaller Austrian companies — the ones you might actually want to work at — no platform existed.

So you negotiate based on gut feeling. Or you lowball yourself to be safe. Both are expensive mistakes.

arbeitgebercheck.at was built to fix that. The kind of information that determines whether someone accepts a lowball offer or negotiates confidently.

Never went corporate, no big spendings, marketing budget or SE cooporations.

How It Works

Simple to use.
Great impact.

01
Rate your employer
Anonymously rate your current or former employer — culture, management, work-life balance, colleagues and more. Takes 5 minutes.
02
Unlock salary data
Want to see what others earn? Submit your own salary first. Contribution-gated access keeps the data honest and growing.
03
Rate application processes
Applied somewhere? Rate the experience — response time, professionalism, feedback quality. Helps people applying for a new job knowing what to expect.
Product Mechanics

The decisions that
make it actually work.

"You see real salaries because the people reading them are also willing to share theirs. It's not charity. It's not complicated. It's the whole point."
On why the gating mechanic matters
Give to get
Want to see salary data? Help others by submitting yours first. Not to be a jerk, but to keep people honest. Passive readers don't add value. Contributors do.
Completely anonymous
No personal information shared, every rate checked by moderators (It's a me).
Marketing automation and engagement
Onboarding emails, re-engagement campaigns, notifications when companies you looked at get new reviews, crossselling. All automatic. All in the background.
Employers can claim their page
Companies can see their own reviews. Some pay for better visibility, not for paid content. Fair game.
By the Numbers

Real traction.
No funding required.

2.500+
Employer ratings submitted
5.000+
Users registered
TOP
Austrian search positions for company + rating queries
1
Person who built, launched, and runs it
Who Built This

One engineer.
Full ownership.

Bernhard
Engineer · PM · Founder · bernype
PHP LaravelVue 3Inertia.jsTailwindMySQLPlaywrightDockerSelf-hosted VPSSEO

arbeitgebercheck.at isn't a startup project. It's a side project built in parallel with a full-time role leading 15–25 engineers — which means every decision had to count.

No product manager to hand specs to. No UX team. No DevOps. One person, every role, every decision.

"The standup meetings are very short. Also I always agree with myself about the sprint goal."
On solo product development

The 2025 relaunch was a complete rebuild. Not because the old version was broken, but because sometimes you realize the original code is crap and you're the only one who has to fix it. So you do.

This is what full product ownership actually looks like: no hand-offs, no gaps, no excuses.

Three ways
to be part of this.

Whether you're a job seeker, an employer, or someone looking for the person who built this.

Use the platform
Rate an employer · check salaries · help others decide
↗
See the other product
werkstattcheck.at — same builder, different solution
↗
Work with the builder
25 years of engineering leadership · open to the right opportunity
→