Smartsheet reviews

3.2

41% would recommend to a friend

(1,297 total reviews)
avatar

Rajeev Singh

29% approve of CEO

30% positive business outlook

Smartsheet has an employee rating of 3.2 out of 5 stars, based on 1,297 company reviews on Glassdoor which indicates that most employees have a good working experience there. The Smartsheet employee rating is in line with the average (within 1 standard deviation) for employers within the Information Technology industry (3.9 stars).

Reviews by job title

1K reviews
1.0
Aug 2, 2022

An Amazon hangover

Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

I think the industry space the company is in has much promise. And Smartsheet is definitely an early leader in that space.

Cons

Smartsheet culture has changed drastically over the years. When I started here years ago, it was a genuinely cooperative culture. But Smartsheet's early success with their IPO attracted career managers (including the current CTO), especially from Amazon who I assume wanted to ride the wave of growth Smartsheet was having. They changed the culture to introduce stack ranking. Employees are ranked on a complicated matrix of past performance and anticipated future impact (AFI) with 3 ratings - lagging, on par and pacesetter. Employees that fall under the bottom 3 boxes of the matrix (anything lower than 'on par' for 'past performance and 'on par' for AFI) are rounded up for improvement. In the past, the performance improvement plan (PIP) was more reasonable and genuinely sought to help employees improve. But now that time are tough (with the 2022 tech layoffs), it's more about managing them out.

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Smartsheet Response
3y
Thank you for taking the time to write about your experience at Smartsheet. We’re proud to be a leader in our space and I’m glad to hear you see our promise as well. I hope you’ll continue to actively contribute to our future individually and as part of your larger team. While I agree we have grown quickly, we’ve worked hard to preserve our people-first culture as we’ve scaled the business, upholding our shared values including what we refer to as “‘We’ Before ‘Me.’” I would like to share that our performance management philosophy has not changed. Performance counts at Smartsheet and always has; in fact “Drives Results” is one of our core competencies. We do not engage in forced ranking, however we assess our talent relative to expectations of their level and the market. And, we do have guidance for our leaders to ensure we can differentiate and reward our team members for exceptional results throughout the year including during reward cycles. If you have any questions -- particularly around what you can do to help support team members who may be underperforming relative to expectations -- please know that my door is always open. – Megan Hansen, Chief People & Culture Officer
4.0
Jul 11, 2022
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

The people are amazing to work with almost across the board. The project/product manages were some of the best I’ve ever worked with. While the batting average is 250 in most places the standard at Smartsheet is 500 in terms of performance, professional & personal collaboration and the desire for us all to succeed. Solid product I was proud to own publicly with a strong focus on the customer. Customer impact was often discussed and always considered before new features, update or fixes were undertaken or deployed.

Cons

Holding onto some of the tools, organizational thinking and backend priorities from it’s start up days in 2005. Pushing to adopt industry standard changes can be challenging. An ongoing loss of quality people due to multiple re-orgs that were abrupt, poorly communicated, poorly executed without being fully thought through, (created the need for addition re-orgs). These impacted the corporate culture and morale across the engineering originations, but left the challenges mentioned above unchanged.

2.0
May 31, 2022

Declining company culture

Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

- individual teams with good managers are supportive and try to continue the old Smartsheet culture and have work-life balance - Excellent principle engineers

Cons

- Engineering had too many competing priorities and senior leadership does not set clear goals and encourage follow through on any of them - Chaotic leadership - Amazon CTO, directors, and managers have imported the worst of Amazon culture without any of the positive engineering processes

Viewing 100 - 102 of 1,297 Reviews

Glassdoor has 1,379 Smartsheet reviews submitted anonymously by Smartsheet employees. Read employee reviews and ratings on Glassdoor to decide if Smartsheet is right for you.