Disingenuous - Anonymous employee Appian Employee Review

1.0
Nov 17, 2016
Anonymous employee
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

Appian has high salaries, great benefits, and good coffee in their offices. Additionally, Reston Town Center is a nice area.

Cons

Appian Academy is a 3 week training course all technical and consulting employees go through. It is expected to be on-the-job for 40 hours, and then work about 25 hours off-the-job per week during Academy. During this time, you learn that while Appian's software is pretty neat, it's honestly not world-changing or special. They automate business practices on their platform., and there's a Facebook-style News Feed which helps "collaboration." Note: poor performance during Academy can result in termination. Outside of this ridiculous requirement of overworking you with job functions you may or may not be performing once out of Academy, Appian asks you to drink the Kool-Aid of "hard work is rewarded" and "we all make everyone better." They position themselves as a perfect "meritocracy." Perhaps, but Appian is an old software company. It's no Google which tries to treat its employees incredibly well. Appian wants to use you to extract your labor for profit for the company. It's that simple. This creates a culture where there's not really a want to give more, but there's the expectation that you do. Reston Town Center is a great place, but it's about an hour outside of DC. There's no metro rail to take you there, so expect an hour commute driving. And expect to pay about $5.00 in tolls round-trip.

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Appian Response
9y
Thank you for sharing your feedback. I'm never satisfied with Appian software or Appian Academy or anything we do which is one of the reasons I read these reviews. Appian doesn't pretend to be a perfect meritocracy, that's impossible, but we try to recognize new talent and ideas. We put consultants and engineers together in Academy because we want people to know how their work affects each other, we want people to forge bonds across departments, and we encourage people to transfer between departments if they have the passion and aptitude to do so. Readers - I encourage you to ask your interviewer for examples since there are many this year. And I'm glad you agree, Reston Town Center is a great place, 19 miles from DC, a 24 to 45 minute drive at 8:30am most days according to Google. Tolls are a pain. As for IPO timing, nobody can predict the stock market but Matt Calkins keeps new hires and all staff updated the actual status (no, not far off).

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