Some sense of cockiness may have been acceptable in the early days of "self-service" BI tools, but the competitive landscape had changed greatly and competitive products are catching up rapidly in terms of capability and value. The dismissive attitude towards all competition seems to have led to a number of toxic cultural attributes such as an undue sense of superiority by members of the sales force who "won" consistently in the early days when Tableau was the only "drag and drop" BI tool around. These reps now maintain very preferential territories with cherry-picked accounts across multiple territories. This compounds the problem further as their success is artificially inflated, they are not forced to implement or create new strategies in order to succeed, and it fosters an undue sense of superiority. While management insists that all territories are divided as equally as possible based on unbiased data, I've seen the process and assure you that favoritism is heavily in play and it's not all "data-driven".
Another huge area of concern is how they are implementing their "diversity and inclusion" initiative. I believe in D&I programs and the value behind them, but they need to be well thought-out and executed in order to make sure it actually accomplishes the underlying goals or the program. Tableau's efforts here are.... disturbing. Instead of a slow-burn of education, discussions and panels to help educate the company on the value of diversity and recognition of unconscious bias, they are simply dictating to hiring managers and they don't want white males. I was told verbatim by an HR representative when looking for a new member of my team "remember, we don't want to hire someone who.... looks like that (motioning to a white male team member)" This comment almost made me sick on the spot. Is that "inclusion"? Another "inclusion" problem they have is around personality types. They seem to find value only in people that have bright, bubbly, overly-positive personalities. They want people with huge mouth-open smiles taking selfies with their (non white-male) friends in front of Tableau logos. That's not a bad thing for advertising, but a successful company takes all kinds. Some of the smartest people I know (and even very successful sales people) have been quiet and introspective
