Pros
- Free snacks and drinks - Free health, dental, and vision insurance - Co-founder is a well-respected celebrity within the industry - plus, he's a good person who treats people well even though he's not involved in the business. - If you're not experienced selling into the Fortune 1000, you can learn a lot about Enterprise sales. - Truly a unique product and market. There aren't any real competitors in the space... Yet... - There are pockets of great, brilliant coworkers. - Annual company meetings are fun
Cons
Everything starts at the top: - The CEO claimed to be an analytical person and "leads" a company preaching the importance of making better decisions based on quantitative data, yet all of the business decisions seemed to be made based on his hunches and whatever the latest book he read said. - CEO didn't respect nor trust salespeople. When he first joined the company years ago, he hired "Enterprise Account Executives" by title but used them exclusively to schedule meetings for only him to go sell. Fast forward a couple years and AE's actually do sell but CEO wants to be involved in every deal. The CEO underestimates how savvy buyers are and how they can see right through what an "Executive Bridge" is - which is an overabused sales tactic. - The CEO's attitude towards sales trickled down into every other Department/Executive. Marketing believed the sales team sat on their hands doing nothing all day while waiting for inbound leads. Professional Services thought all salespeople have the intelligence of Neanderthals and treated them as a nuisance. Some interdepartmental relationships were borderline toxic and there are bottlenecks everywhere except Legal. The list goes on. - Sales targets and quotas were unrealistic and dramatically affected morale. Only 10% of reps hit quota over the last 3 years - making OTE laughably unattainable for most. - AT LEAST 20% of every week was wasted on pointless meetings, forecast calls, administrative/clerical tasks, filling out lengthy deal review templates (where you'll get torn to shreds by the CEO). - There was huge disconnect from what Senior Leadership and the board of directors thought was happening in the market vs. what was really happening in the market and on the sales floor. - The staff was told every other month that the new version of the product is being released "soon" but after incomprehensible delays, it's finally about to be released 2 years LATE (not sure if it actually happened - could have been another delay since I left). - Executives kept on telling its employees "this is a unique, once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to create a brand new product category and that everyone will look back fondly on and remember the excitement of the journey. So we need to push and work harder." But only a select lucky few have stock options/equity in the company... The message was both annoying and fell on deaf ears for those who had no incentives to go above and beyond.