Splunk rhymes with Drunk for a reason
Pros
Existing customers tend to be very loyal and love the product (admin level people). The core product works great and is applicable to many use cases. The company brand remains strong.
Cons
Leadership at this company up to the very top is weak. None of the people in place now have done what this company needs to do. It's very chaotic and there's a sense that nobody has a viable plan. Power centers are duking it out. Some very senior leaders only manage up and are effectively invisible to their organizations. Talent has been fleeing this company for a few years now. If you don't believe me, just do your homework on LI. Competition has caught up with the core product, putting price pressure on a very expensive offering. Other Splunk products are not replacing revenue slowdowns. Some reps have made their quota swapping clients from perpetual licensing to SaaS/recurring revenue. This was a one-time bonanza. Quotas bake in very aggressive growth that's not happening. Selling motions are complex and engineering execution is slow. Major updates and new products needed to win are experiencing significant delays. I'm not sure what a lot of teams do at this company. Roles are overlapping and not sufficiently differentiated, which is confusing everyone and creating friction. Sales motions are just ridiculous. The company prides itself on engagements that are selling too low and are just educational in nature. They don't appeal well to new clients. Cost of sales is integer multiples of comparable companies, no exaggeration. Last, most important really, culture at this company sucks. It might have been great once but that time has passed. The good culture left with the talent. What remains is a tribal, gossipy backstabbing culture. The only people happy at this company seem to be sales engineers, who appear to be paid to do free professional services and other fun science experiments.
