- Commission errors nearly monthly (always against our favor). There was no breakdown of commission and reps had to do the math themselves to see if quota was paid out correctly. This was despite asking for a commission doc similar to what AEs received, being told it was coming, and never getting it.
- The BDR Reps paid for a highly effective sales tool (Dripify) out of pocket. BDR managers lobbied sales leaders to have the company cover this for the team like the rest of the sales tools, and although they were told it was in the works, it was red-taped and never acted on.
- The team as a whole chronically struggled to hit meeting quota, and instead of revising it to a healthy level, it was increased. This means the overall OTE does not reflect what most people earn.
- The biggest problem on the SDR/BDR teams though is the lack of advancement opportunity. Despite the best efforts from direct BDR managers, sales leadership and other dept leaders were largely unreceptive to requests to foster internal advancement opportunities. Although no one should be guaranteed advancement just by showing up, there were no processes or initiatives to evaluate strong talent on the team. Three BDRs made the jump to AE in the nearly two years I was there - two were let go in less than 3 months and the other less than a year. One person from the BDR team successfully transitioned to another team (marketing) - 20 months and one successful advancement, from a large group of smart and capable individuals.
^ all of this is specific to the Business Development team for the most part.
For the company as a whole, there was a huge shift from "we can do anything" to "everyone buckle up" over the course of 2022. The CIO, CRO and CMO were all fired within months of each other. The latter two positions replaced with friends of the CEO.
The C-suite notoriously had no female leadership until people brought it up enough and they added a single token hire in Legal.
A lot of top talent from the dev teams left on their own accord all in a short span of time. While the commercial sales team has found some success. The enterprise and strategic teams struggle to penetrate large accounts and bring in new business. Overall SingleStore is outgunned by AWS, Azure, GCP, Snowflake, Oracle, Mongo etc in the biggest accounts where it matters.
