-Career growth is non-existent but I don't think it's because managers don't care to invest in career growth; I think it's because the company has been in a reactionary state for so long that they can't afford to invest the time/resources to anything other than whatever it is that they're reacting to at the time. (e.g. catastrophic releases, org restructures, security incidents, mass layoffs, etc.)
-You might get a market-competitive salary when you first accept employment, but you won't see more than a 1-3% annual increase and if your benefits package includes an annual bonus, it's a stock bonus which is a slap in the face when you consider the BLKB stock's volatile performance and the fact that if you're terminated before the stock vests, you lose that money.
-The company appears to be struggling HARD to catch their solutions up with the rest of the industry and most users still heavily use the legacy products because the next-gen version is still being built out (that said, the next-gen version has some promising features).
-Their solutions/services are constantly experiencing incidents so if you're in a customer-facing role, be prepared to field angry and disillusioned customers' calls and emails.
-The quality of the product support service is not great and I don’t think it’s because the humans fielding the support cases are incapable; I think it’s because the quality of the on-boarding took a hit when the Customer Operations department restructured in early 2017. The Customer Support team has never been the same since and you'll often see users on social media complaining about how they feel like they know more than the support agent....there are some disgruntled users who call the associates "Customer A**es". It's really sad to see because Blackbaud Support used to be the crown jewel of the company for the customers.
-Most of the executive-level leadership seem completely out of touch with reality and disengaged from their employees.
-Blackbaud has monopolized the social good sector of the industry for the last 40 years via acquisitions rather than meaningful innovation, so there are a ton of unprogressive dinosaurs at Blackbaud who have been around since the 90's/early 00's and they sit comfortably in their positions, even if they bring little-to-no value to the future of the company.
-Because of the large population of unprogressive dinosaurs at Blackbaud, there doesn’t appear to bew much operational or technical innovation...it's a lot of catching up with the rest of the industry these days. It's like the company stopped investing in operational improvement in the mid-late 90's, You'll hear "It's been like that for the last 20-30 years" often as an excuse for why a specific feature functions the way it does or a specific business process exists....and you'll have more success climbing Mt. Everest than you will trying to change anything for the sake of the customers.,,,this is exactly why and how the company found themselves the victim of a major security incident.
-The company experienced a major security incident in 2019/2020 that resulted in the FTC and SEC getting involved and slapping the company with a $49 million fine.
-There's an active class action lawsuit against the company in response to the security incident, which the company's attorneys publicly stated that they were concerned about meeting their financial obligations in response to the critical response of the security incident.
-The stock price hasn't been over $100 in the last 5-6 years and recently dropped by ~15% after the Q4 2023 call with the street where they announced that they missed their sales projection by ~$4 million. Even if the Q1 2024 call with the street goes well, too much bad PR and train wrecks have come to light within the last 3 months. Customers and employees have been very vocal about planning their exit strategies.
-The company has been "fighting off" a takeover attempt by Clearlake Capital since 2022 and swallowed a poison pill in October 2022 but the board recently decided to cough up the poison pill effective March 2024...7 months ahead of its expiration date. Unsurprisingly, Clearlake Capital has publicly expressed renewed interest in taking over Blackbaud and sent the board a buyout offer a couple weeks ago.
-The CEO was recently arrested for a DUI...on a weeknight at 2-3AM...two days after the Q4 2023 call with the street, which really shows you the quality of the leadership of the CEO and the majority of the C-Suite right now.
