Conga Reviews

3.6

66% would recommend to a friend

(1,158 total reviews)
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Dave Osborne

56% approve of CEO

55% positive business outlook

Conga has an employee rating of 3.6 out of 5 stars, based on 1,158 company reviews on Glassdoor which indicates that most employees have a good working experience there. The Conga employee rating is in line with the average (within 1 standard deviation) for employers within the Information Technology industry (3.9 stars).

Reviews by job title

1K reviews
2.0
16 Jan 2016
Recommend
CEO approval
Business outlook

Pros

The products are cool. They are innovative, and are well-positioned in a space that is hot and exciting. The Salesforce ecosystem is a great place to be from a job-security standpoint too - - it's super incestuous, so once you've been at a Salesforce partner, it's really easy to move to another, so . . . The brand/design is getting a lot better (I like the green . . . I know that's dumb, but it's true.) Apttus also manages to hire a lot of fun, smart people at the middle-manager/experienced individual contributor level, so there is a nice camaraderie there. Also, I've realized that going through tough times bonds people together, so I feel closer to my colleagues here than other places I've worked.

Cons

For a company that has abysmal GlassDoor reviews, with repeated themes of nepotism, lack of leadership, poor work/life balance and salaries, doesn't the recent barrage of A+ reviews from new employees seem out of place? Hmmm . . . wonder what that's about. . . . seems to happen at the top of every quarter . . . It bothers me that the strategy to solving the "People Problem" is simply, "Counteract bad Glassdoor reviews with good ones" because I'm a shareholder, and the exodus of talent is the SINGLE BIGGEST RISK to Apttus's success. That keeps me up at night WAY MORE than the Steelbrick acquisition. Apttus will fail without its people - - and coming up with 1984-esq slogans (One Team!) or adding another day of free lunch will not counteract lack of reward, lack of leadership, lack of empowerment, lack of transparency, and lack of collaboration that starts at the top, and permeates through the entire organization. The thing that bothers me the most when I read Glassdoor is that the theme of good reviews seems to be, "Anyone who doesn't like it here, just doesn't like to work hard." I call BS on that. The people that care the most and work the hardest actually are the ones that have the hardest time surviving because Apttus is all take, and no give. Weak/rare raises, lack of recognition, lack of top down support (in fact, many of the VPs that should be working together barely talk, and many have incredibly dysfunctional relationships) put A-Players in a bad position. If you want to survive, you learn real quick how to manage the fallout when your team's directives are at odds with another team's directives - - because the VPs don't deal with each other, Managers have to find creative workarounds to get things done w/out landing themselves in hot water. It's frustrating, stressful, and, for people who believe that culture drives success, this place is not a good fit. Other general notes re: culture challenges: - Lack of communication isn't just between VPs, it's from execs to team -- for example, biggest news/stressor of the year was that Salesforce acquired the competitor, and all the team got was an email and a hastily written FAQ. Seems news like that warranted a live Q&A with the CEO -- at a MINIMUM. - Execs play favorites - - people are often rewarded based on who they are, and who their manager is, not on what they do. It was incredibly demoralizing. - Lack of female leadership presented a challenge, in that, there is very little mentorship, and an aggressive Bro-y culture in many groups. At one of the few all-hands meetings, Leadership bragged that we were super diverse because 30% of the employees were women. While there are all kinds of problems with that statement at face-value, if you look at the percent of women in leadership roles - and I'm talking about women with real influence, there are 2 or 3 . . . so that 30% number is pretty meaningless. - Lack of prioritization and focus mean that even good ideas are rarely seen through to completion. For example, we started an early talent program - great idea, but with no real vision for how those people get incorporated into roles, and guided into a successful career, this program led to very high attrition and dissatisfaction. Feedback from many of the early talent hires is that that they were treated like "lesser" kids in the org, even as they tried to move into real roles. - There's a strange "us vs them" mentality and approach to everything. This applies to working cross-functionally, and dealing with the market. The "one team" slogan is an attempt to overcome this, but not in a meaningful way. - Pay is not competitive, and it seems to be a point of pride to negotiate people lower than what they deserve. For perspective, my base pay was about 40k below the industry average, and my manager seemingly had no interest in addressing this, although I asked several times.

1.0
12 Jul 2020
Recommend
CEO approval
Business outlook

Pros

If your c level or high level management this might be a good place to spend a year or 2 collecting a check.

Cons

Everything, and I mean everything, positive about Conga was eliminated in the acquisition by Apttus. They immediately eliminated all the perks and appealing benefits on day 1. They also cancelled our 401k with no option to replace or enroll in a new plan for 2 months. They paid out peanuts for our options and did everything they could to try and convince people that it was actually good for them. Um, no. People aren't stupid. Just own it and move on. It was pretty clear that one of the biggest parts of the negotiations of the buyout centered around how best to ensure the actual employees of the company received NOTHING for their options and hard work. Only investors and the CEO. The Conga CEO then proceeded to tell everybody about his big promotion to the Apttus board and how proud of himself he was and that he hoped everybody else was real proud of him, also. He said this while knowing none of us were receiving anything of value for our own options AND knowing that Apttus was going to layoff hundreds of talented, hardworking US employees to be replaced with cheap, outsourced labor. The utter lack of empathy, common sense and human decency from this CEO is mind boggling. Congrats! You get to buy yourself a new sports car or summer house while hundreds of your hardworking employees get fired during a pandemic. The new executive team comes in and immediately blows a lot of phony smoke about how much they value people. How they're all about the people. How its 'people, people, people' they care about and how this merger is all about being "better together". They then refuse to tell anybody who's getting laid off for 2 months while they "listen and learn" just keeping everybody in a limbo state with slashed benefits and no retirement plans. What were they learning, you ask? Great question. Nobody knows. They spent 0 time talking to any employees or low level managers who would even have a clue about who is/was/could be valuable. They spoke to a couple VP level managers and that was it. They then handed out their layoffs with a paltry severance. They held numerous all-hands types of meetings to say basically nothing during this phase except how important the people were. They did this while making constant cringe worthy jokes among themselves while chuckling like giddy school kids. Here's a hot tip: If you care about 'people' don't laugh and make jokes for 2 months while talking about how you are trying to figure out who gets fired. There has since been a max exodus of the talented people who survived this layoff just further emphasizing how incompetent this 'learning' phase was. There were people who in all likely hood may have stayed on for awhile but since they made no efforts to even engage with anybody on a personal level they had no way of knowing that and just picked people randomly out of a hat to fire. For anybody who did survive and actually decides to stick around it is just a waiting game until they are replaced by cheap outsourced labor in the future anyways. There is no focus on quality for their own products and it is going to be a shame to watch all the old Conga products get the same treatment and suffer considerable quality downgrades over time. You can fully expect to see a lot of churn from this in the next few years as old clients get fed up with the new reality. So, after firing tons of people and then watching all the talented ones who survived start quitting in large numbers you might ask what exactly "better together" means. What was the true reason for this buyout? Pretty clearly it was to escape the past. Apttus as an organization has an absolutely disgusting past riddled with sexual assaults, harassment and toxic leadership and management. Go google some of the articles about the founder and some of the original 'leaders' of this company. It is revolting. Now, the old guard was forced out a new team of execs were brought in. What would make talented leadership want to run for a company in a state like this? Well, I'd say that question answers itself (no true leaders would run to sign up and be a part of this sinking ship). So, you have a bunch of 'leaders' who don't care about people, quality or anything else. They're there to try and salvage something for the investors and get themselves a nice little payout in the process. First step, buy out Conga and assume the Conga name and brand. They've now shed themselves of the tainted Apttus name/brand. In the next year or so you can expect for there to be a big rebrand in addition to this to try and further remove themselves from that checkered past. This might fool a few clients and potential employees but most people can use Google and can read. That might come as a surprise to upper management, though. After this big rebrand, they will double down on sales and expensive conferences blowing what money they have left while continuing to not invest in quality or their products. The ROI on this will be next to nothing as by then the word will be out on the poor quality of the products they took over and clients will be churning left and right. Eventually there will be a fire sale to ensure the investors get something before its too late. Employees will get nothing again, but at this point you'd have to be crazy to want to stick around on this ride to the end. If you are somebody looking for a job or new opportunity and somehow end up looking at Conga/Apttus, take some advice and turn around and run the other way. Run as hard and as fast as you can and just when you think you cannot run any longer and your sides are splitting from the effort...dig down deep and run a little bit farther. This is what "people" with integrity and spirit that make great employees do. If you lack those things then by all means sign up for Conga/Apttus as you will fit right in with the culture they're fostering.

2.0
19 Sept 2015
Recommend
CEO approval
Business outlook

Pros

The market space is huge. They have funding to keep the company going. Build on top of the Salesforce Platform. Can move up quickly career wise because their hiring so fast. Nice office, building new office around the world.

Cons

They are only looking to hire a lot of people for the IPO. They are in need of people for certain department yes, but they are hiring to fulfill IPO requirements. You might not have a long career here because you will be unhappy 5 months going in to this. Product does not work. Horrible management, I mean bad! They will lie to you. They've taken down some of the bad reviews on here because their excuse is "slander" when its not. It's the truth. There are so many angry employees that feel like they were treated unfairly, so they tell the truth on here to make sure you make the right decision. Not organize and no effective processes put in place. The company might have raised money and everything looks good from the outside, but it's not worth it. There are other jobs out there. You will regret joining. HR is there for employees and management, but they can't really do anything but just listen.

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Glassdoor has 1,213 Conga reviews submitted anonymously by Conga employees. Read employee reviews and ratings on Glassdoor to decide if Conga is right for you.