- POOR LEADERSHIP - From the top down, Appian has a deep problem with management. Leadership lacks transparency and does not coral teams across departments toward common goals. There is no standard goal setting or tracking toward KPIs. The negative culture and lack of clarity and direction-setting starts at the top. Leadership has been in place since the start of the company and comes across arrogant and like they want to keep doing the same things they did when the company was in a completely different growth phase. It's not working for where the company is today, and whenever they hire new managers to bring fresh perspectives, the co-founders give them a few months to try to solve massive, foundational issues, and then they turn on those leaders and blame them for the pre-existing issues. The frequent changing of direction from the top and refusal to delegate also leads to tons of inefficiency and wasted resources.
- AN AUTOMATION COMPANY...WITH NO MARKETING AUTOMATION - Leadership does not respect Marketing the way the company values engineering (also proven by the several rounds of layoffs firing smart marketing employees new and old). This has lead to a strong product, but a marketing team that had hardly even touched an automation tool until the past year. The way the company sells itself may be congruous to its product, but it is completely incongruous to its own marketing team. If you are a talented marketer, stay far away from this company. A shame.
- IN-FIGHTING AND A CULTURE OF BLAME - Departments are competitive and vindictive against each other (marketing vs. sales, Biz Tech vs. marketing, Biz Tech vs. Engineering). Leaders in business units fight against each other and throw each other under the bus instead of collaborating on shared goals.
- WASTEFUL INEFFICIENCIES ABOUND - There is an endless loss of productivity and synergy because of HOW work is organized. Teams across the company are often found working on the same problem with zero awareness of the fact that another team is already working on the same problem. Appian's marketing team had the worst role clarity and least distinct swim lanes of any marketing organization I have ever worked for in 10+ years. This leaves important work un-prioritized, because everyone is trying to tackle everything and are spread too thin.
- MARKETING OPERATIONS - The fabric of how Appian approaches marketing operations and analytics is deeply flawed and has not been able to scale with the company's growth. Leadership continues to try to put a Band-Aid on a bullet wound, instead of hiring serious Marketing Operations leaders to help solve the issue and right the course. They have sold these problems off to other departments (Biz Tech, Sales Ops, Engineering) to solve, because the leadership doesn't trust marketing and marketing operations to do their job. This leads to other departments pointing fingers at Marketing.
