Pros
- The voice of the customer space is a truly unique opportunity to influence how other tech companies build great products and interact with their customers, especially where customer experience or product roadmap is concerned. It's also an opportunity to network with customers from all different industry verticals and to learn more about how different verticals influence business operations. - The majority of ICs and people I worked with day to day were lovely human beings with good intentions, just trying to do their best. - I personally have a new baseline for what it means to work in a toxic organization.
Cons
- The GTM teams are in an exceptionally difficult position, selling an overpriced low quality offering into an oversaturated market. Sales quotas are unrealistic and the product is difficult to support as it is riddled with tech debt and constant performance/stability issues. The product itself is an over glorified Google Form that is a web of Marketing Spin, but you can't put lipstick on a pig. Developing any new feature or product takes years and bugs are never fixed. At SKO this year, when asked about how to set customer expectations for the thousands of bugs that were piling up in the backlog, the leadership team openly said — You don't, we don't fix bugs if the customer isn't that important to us or a priority for the business. All SaaS products end up with some sort of perpetual defect backlog, but Alchemer's list of dirty laundry is far past acceptable for any reasonable consumer trying to use the product. Alchemer preaches having a “Heart for Service”, but the only service they're interested in is serving the bottom line. - From a Product Development perspective, Alchemer is running waterfall. Need I say more? - Alchemer is heavy on middle management and lack of trust comes from the top down, causing micromanagement at every level of the organization. It Is required that you report on or quite literally log your time for everything you do. In addition, rather than trusting the ICs to fulfill the job they were hired to do, lack of trust prevents decisions from being made below the leadership level, inhibiting everyones ability to get their job done. Product is run by committee and the time it takes to make a decision inhibits Alchemer's ability to beat competitors to market. In addition to micromanagement, Alchemer runs the day to day of the organization by fear. Fear that you will casually be fired on Monday with 0 warning, fear of your role/responsibilities changing out from underneath you without warning, and fear that your manager or a member of leadership would casually berate you in front of your peers as if you were less than human over anything and everything based on how they were feeling that day. Alchemer is unwilling to listen, adjust, or approach problem-solving with flexibility or collaboration. Being or seeing your coworkers dismissed and berated was an every day occurrence at Alchemer. - Alchemer does not even pretend to care about DE&I outside of external optics like adjusting their logo for pride colors. The experiences my peers and I had in regards to DE&I at Alchemer are deeply traumatizing to many and border on unbelievable in 2023. - What this all means for companies that Alchemer acquires, is that they take a great product with a strong team and absolutely gut it. They kill any ounce of culture the company might have had prior, rather than trying to understand or embrace it. As for the product, they will strip it back to the bare bones and squeeze every ounce of life out of it until the margin is as high as possible and the product can exist in limbo with a skeleton crew. If you are looking to sell to Alchemer, take a hard look at what is important to you. If it's culture, quality, and delivering value for customers — Alchemer will sell you on lies and rip everything you value about your product apart in a matter of months. If the bottom line and making a profit is important to you, I would think Alchemer would be the perfect fit. That said, with an organization so willing and able to screw their own customers, I'm sure they wouldn't hesitate to screw you as well. - Benefits are sub par and their salary bands are below market average.
