Appian reviews

As others have pointed, the PTO policy isn't generous, especially compared to other tech or consulting companies in the area. I was attracted to Appian for it's culture. "Best idea wins", right? Not quite. I found the culture in PS to be toxic, compared to the rest of the company. In my tenure, many people actively transferred out of PS. I can't think of anyone that actually transferred in or boomeranged back. There's an obvious disconnect. People do seem genuinely happier in Engineering so if that's your department, you're in luck. The company culture seems much stronger outside of PS. I'm not convinced the PS leaders share the same vision or values as other department leaders. Retaining talent and improving morale doesn't seem to be their priority. Recruiting advertises a rotational abroad in UK or Australia to new PS hires. Every attempt at this was futile. Upper management within Commercial actively prevented this at every step of the way so don't get your hopes up. I was on the bench on several occasions, waiting for new work to come in. There was zero communication, timeline or transparency during this time from upper management so I got a nice 3 week vacation out of this. In my experience, you'll have no voice in your project selection or how long you'll stay on. The reporting structure is an absolute mess. Feedback is essentially non-existent. You're assigned a mentor in PS. However, this mentor may never actually work with you in a professional setting. And this is the person writing your annual review. You also have a career adviser, but again, this person has never worked with you before. You also have a team lead and a TDM one level above the team lead. 12 months on a project and my lead and TDM never once expressed any interest in my career or goals. I also found some of their practices borderline unethical. TDMs, leads, and VPs expecting us to work 10-11 hour days, but only allowing us to bill the client for 8 hours of work? We also had 7 am team calls multiple times a week. Overall, I thought Appian (the company) was great, but professional services (the department) promoted an unhealthy and toxic work environment. For some, PS may be a good place to start your career, but don't expect to stay long.

Change is hard. And it's also inevitable. Our IPO last year (and admittedly, for a few years leading up to it) forced us to grow up as a company. We had to standardize and mature processes which were traditionally less formal. We've created more structure and controls around functions of the job where there used to be none. We're accountable to a public market and shareholders today that, 18 months ago, had little influence on our actions. That change can best be described as growing pains. The literal kind. Where our bones grew too fast for our body and some pain was endured. And those pains have been shared by a few on this site and others, where they had a very different experience at Appian than I. Perhaps I was insulated from the pain because of a great group of people around me. Perhaps others weren't. But the rate of change over the past few years can definitely be seen by some as a Con. The other big "Con" that I hear about from time to time is benefits. I don't see it as a significant issue personally, but I can understand the concern of others. Full disclosure: I take advantage of my spouse's healthcare plan at another employer, so I can't comment on Appian's offering. Lastly, brand awareness. It's evolving, and my territory is receiving a significantly larger number of inbound opportunities than in years past. But for Sales, it can still be a battle to get the first phone call scheduled. This will continue to improve as our customer footprint scales, though I would raise caution to anyone coming from a blue chip who thinks they can just smile and dial.