Read this before working with them
I'd like to leave my feedback and share my experience with these people, as I would have liked to read something like this before applying to collaborate with them.
It all started with a Junior Scrum Master position at KomunIKON, based in Switzerland, which I happily applied for. The conditions were ideal for me to gain knowledge and experience as a Scrum Master: part-time and unpaid. I applied, got an interview, and was accepted. However, from that very moment, I started noticing red flags.
First, the tone of their emails. For example: "please sign the contract in one email instead of exchanging 10 or more emails." Translation: sign whatever we give you and don’t ask questions. They also asked me to send my passport with a “visible signature” in the picture and emphasized that the signature in the contract had to match the one on my passport. Quite strange, don’t you think? Why would they care so much about the signature of someone working for free?
The next big red flag was the name of the contract: "Unilateral Agreement." Unilateral? Was I supposed to be working just for myself? It made no sense. There were also several suspicious clauses, such as: obligations remaining for 5 years after ending the collaboration (!), all pre-existing intellectual property becoming 100% theirs, no disclosure or mention of the experience allowed, etc. The whole contract felt overly restrictive, almost like something out of the secret services 😅
I asked them to amend some parts and quickly sent my proposal. It took them two weeks to respond. In the end, they barely changed anything, and I decided to move forward anyway. I sent them the documents with a start date and asked them to return a version signed on their side. It took ages. The back-and-forth was ridiculous: “you sign first,” “sign it and then I will sign,” “add the date and sign it, then I will.” I was convinced they would never actually return a signed version.
Eventually, they did “sign” it—but only with what looked like a screenshot of the founder’s handwritten name on paper. It felt very unprofessional and quite shady.
It seemed like they were extremely cautious about leaving any kind of trace.
In the end, I sent the remaining documents but added watermarks to my passport, especially over the signature, as I was genuinely concerned about how it might be used.
After sending everything, there was complete silence for a week. When I followed up about my onboarding, I realized I had missed an email they had sent earlier that same day at 5:00 AM sharp (!), saying they had decided to go with another candidate.
Seriously? After all that back and forth, all the strange requests, and after providing my passport, they just rejected me? They justified it by saying the process had taken too long. But whose delay was that, exactly?
Suspicious, once again.
To sum up: I would have really liked to have this experience, even unpaid, but in a healthy and professional environment. Throughout the entire process, something felt off. Either they are extremely disorganized and unprofessional, or there is something more shady going on...