Opportunity shrouded by startup and industry inexperience - Anonymous employee Talkdesk Employee Review

Now, I will preface that the space and product is way more complex than is given credit in some of these reviews, and there's a whole host of things that have to be considered across data hosting, compliance, hardware, and even just determining a use case fit. That being said, there are fundamental basics missing from the company's DNA that will cause any startup to fail. A lot of people have commented on some of these already, but it's worth stressing. - Culture has shifted to CYA. Everyone has figured out that all ideas must be filtered from the top down, so rather than fighting every battle, people have instead started putting up walls to limit their personal exposure. This is stifling ability to get things done. - Same vein as previous point, but ownership is seriously lacking. People fight over who should be doing what to fill what is primarily a gap in product. No one is willing to own it because no one wants to deal with a tirade from the execs. - Company is cheap on all fronts. It has burned employees personally and professionally from everything including travel, to paying vendors, to how the product shows to customers. - The Talkdesk "brand" right now is thinking people should have the privilege to work there. Maybe right after the Series A, that mentality worked, but now there is no higher ground to stand on. - Relatively little industry knowledge is compiled at Talkdesk. Good luck being a trusted brand when no one truly knows what competition is doing beyond hearsay and hunches. They started making an investment on this, albeit much later than was needed. - The best people are sucked dry doing things they shouldn't be because there's not a significant enough investment in getting top talent for key positions. Many phenomenal candidates have been turned away simply because they're asking for their value, rather than assuming they should be taking a 20% pay cut for the privilege of working at Talkdesk. - Terms and pricing are not favorable (or even reasonable) for the customer. It does not help the customer feel as if they're a partner of yours, but rather that they're buying from a used car salesman. Execs claim they don't lose on price, but they do. Often. - Teams are becoming more and more siloed, and not just on account of the physical separation between offices in Portugal and San Francisco. Marketing doesn't talk to product, which doesn't talk to sales, which doesn't talk to customer success. Everyone is telling different stories and product is marketed light years ahead of what is possible in the platform. Lots of visionary concepts with very little actuality to them, and poor product execution. - "Closed betas" = "We suck at building quality product and aren't willing to address that we don't trust our own engineers". To be clear, closed betas are fine when used to gather early feedback, but when every release goes straight into a closed beta and has no timeline on when it's coming out, it's sitting in a closed beta for the wrong reasons. - Even with the closed betas, product updates are pushed well before they're ready and thoroughly vetted internally. Quantity of code pushed, not quality, seems to be more important. - Lack of focus. No one is willing to say certain directions shouldn't be pursued, from a product perspective. This leads to confusion in the sales process, underscoping in the professional services, and churn in the customer success department. Sales mantra is to "disqualify deals early and often", but then questions rise when a deal is dropped without them verifying that there's no hacky, unsustainable workaround to throw at the wall and see if it sticks. *Worst of all*: The company exists today for the sole purpose of making money. No mission statement, no goals, no desire to solve problems. If you're wondering if customers can see this - they can.