Good culture and pay, but lacking strategy - Product Manager Vertex Employee Review

- Great work culture, and fruitful work

- Random Layoffs, and slow bureaucracy

Able to work remotely was the only benefit I experienced.

After 18 years as a Vertex employee, my one take away after being laid off is that Vertex always was a reactionary company. Rarely ever was a corporate strategy proactive based upon solid market research. Vertex executives were always chasing the "shiny object", which on several occasions were the subject matter of the latest Geoffrey Moore book. I also observed on many occasions a lack of longterm commitment to any established strategy. Almost as if the company had an Attention Deficent Disorder. Think about it - here is a company that arguably was first to market with a product (automated corporate tax software), with an attractive annuity revenue model (recurring fees for update tax data), great opportunities for cross-sales to existing customers, yet never came close to breaking the billion dollar sales barrier. In fact, the company has remained virtually stagnant in terms of total customer companies for decades. Lastly, the company is simply much too woke for my liking.