Toxic sales culture with favoritism and lack of accountability
Pros
Most people are very welcoming, professional and kind. Catered lunches, when you have to be in the office, are really nice, too (but those definitely decreased on frequency this past year). Some great friendships were made and lots of learning from former leadership and the training team is actually hard working and helpful. The RTD pass is solid.
Cons
I feel we may be here all day. 1: There is absolutely no structure laid out for internal promotions on the sales team. Management quite literally goes behind closed doors and picks who gets to move into the next open spot. There is no application or interview process, it’s quite literally a favoritism situation. As a former employee, I was there as the top BDR for over an entire year and I watched countless men get promoted over me who were under performing me. I have no doubt in my mind It was not only gender motivated, but my sexuality had a factor as well. This is not the case throughout the company - the sales team is the one severely lacking in diversity. (Will discuss later) 2: There is no accountability for certain people for their bad behavior. Even if it’s cheating and essentially stealing money from the company. When I called out numerous individuals for cheating (with examples) I got in trouble and was told that “eventually it will come to light. We don’t want to be the whistleblower and cause a riff in our team culture”. 3: The hierarchy mentality of management is so offensive. Being told not to speak to upper leadership about concerns simply because you are not in management yourself- just a peasant BDR. I’ve never worked under such a closed off management team that is so unwelcoming to ideas from the people actually doing the job. 4: Management reserves the right to change your KPI’s/quota at any time without increasing your pay. In some cases, taking away your commission altogether aka - now if you don’t meet 50% of your quota, $0 commission for you! Never was I in this boat, however, it’s just plain wrong to pocket the commission that somebody was supposed to earn for their hard work. Also, the sales team increased productivity requirements by almost 100% within a 12 month period of my start date with zero pay increase - only a small “kicker” added to commission (for those who make 100%+) 5: The “bro culture” and lack of diversity in the sales department. Every event, training, or analogy is very much geared towards a male audience. Leadership completely avoided the entire topic of Pride month (last year) in June. In fact, the senior director of the sales department said “merry Christmas” on June 1 at our stand-up meeting because he couldn’t think of anything else to acknowledge for 1st of June. Part of the “BroCare mentality” is embellishing your success, or bragging about yourself in chat channels that leadership is in to generate positive attention towards yourself. Last I checked, it’s leadership’s job to recognize when there are outstanding performers, or people who are generally more helpful to their peers than others. You should not have to brag about yourself openly in a channel to get that recognition. That is cringe. 6: No quota forgiveness or productivity forgiveness for taking vacation? So what’s the point in taking time off knowing you’re setting yourself up to have to either miss quota, or double your work efforts the remainder of the month you aren’t taking vacation. Makes taking a vacation near impossible.
