-Poor compensation. As others have mentioned on here, it's well below industry standards and they are not willing to negotiate during the interview process. I also came to find out once in role that the bonus compensation offered is rarely given out in full. The chance to receive that full OTE seemed like a pipe dream for most. The company is also very cheap in it's operations. There is so much budget scrutiny & limitations that you'd think there was no money in the bank for a publicly traded company
-Very immature management that operates with passive aggressive tactics
-So much documentation to sift through with very little 1:1 support in ramping up and having a concrete understanding of the operational rhythm of the role I was hired for. I felt bare minimum support from my manager and other colleagues in being introduced to key processes, assets, and resources to perform my role adequately. When I'd realize what I needed, it was often too late. Somewhat of a paradox of not knowing what you need to know/need in the moment in order to be successful because you're being inundated with so much information
-Company onboarding experience felt disjointed & they overwhelm you with tasks to complete before your first day
-The team I was part of seemed very overwhelmed most of the time, yet I had little insight into the specifics of what people were working on. Also several of them, including my manager, had no problem talking badly about one another and others in the company to me
-Felt like there was a disconnect between expressed expectations vs what was actually expected. Feels like leadership/management styles are not as transparent as they claim to be. Received overwhelming positive feedback in one moment to then being criticized and cut down during other times. My manager was often condescending towards me when I was trying to grasp & understand processes and ways of doing things. I didn't appreciate being spoken to at times like I was unfamiliar with certain tools and systems that are common in my field, when what I was trying to understand is why Braze was using them a certain way
-The team also did not feel like it was engrained with key departments that they were creating programs for and supporting, nor did they seem to want to build those connections
-Trying to understand the "why" behind certain decisions, processes, and strategies was difficult. Often felt like things had been built a certain way many years ago and no one bothered to take a second look to assess if those were scalable, relevant, and impactful for the present moment
-Overwhelm sales with a very disjointed onboarding experience that mainly relies on a dense e-learning program that is repetitive, outdated, and difficult to ingest. There is the urgency to get through the program at rapid pace, yet what is not understood is that most people benefit from learning through hands on experience, a chance to apply what they have learned in several different contexts, and the opportunity for collaboration in asking questions and receiving feedback to be able to digest information. An e-learning where there are 81 lessons that jump around from topic to topic at random with dense text and information is not a helpful way to learn a role, industry, or product
-Live sales onboarding sessions felt like they didn't have much relevance to the e-learning & failed to deep dive into role specific criteria like: specific product knowledge, sales skills, prospecting, demo-ing, and a thorough understanding about the specific sales process for different roles. These are all key areas that one would expect when onboarding into a sales role at a company
-It felt like the director I was reporting into didn't have much empathetic experience leading a team, motivating the team, and being inspirational. Felt like she was more interested in micro-management, while often not being aware of critical details herself.
Strategic thinking and being open to new ideas was often shut down or met with little support, yet I was also told that I was encouraged to share those...so what is it?
-I also found out that new sales reps will be fired if they do not perform to a certain standard during the company pitch week (takes place within the first 60 days). This seems like a wild way to run a business, where there is little room for error. Yet when I asked what kind of coaching was provided to mitigate this, I was met with blank stares and few answers. I'm not even sure if these expectations were shared with sales reps, and if they are not then that seems like a huge miss in aligning from the get go on expectations
-There is a lot of blame being slugged around. The team I was on seemed resentful most of the time towards the GTM team they were supporting. In my many years of relevant experience, I've never heard sales new hires be spoken about so poorly or judged so harshly due to the former companies they've worked at. I had one individual on my team tell me verbatim that she was could tell anyone who was hired from X previous company would not be successful and would be very difficult to deal with. I also had another colleague complain to me about new sales reps reaching out to her for the right resources in their content management system. Having empathy and understanding for who our internal customers are is a paramount and fundamental component. It did not feel like that ideology and sentiment was nurtured or engrained on the team.
-Using the product felt very clunky and not very intuitive. I understand that Braze may be industry loved, but I had a hard time navigating the platform just to perform a relatively straightforward onboarding task
-Have heard how abusive and verbally rude the C level executive is that oversees the department I was in. Did not have any direct experience with this person, but the stories shared made it seem like rule by fear was the name of the game & that this person had unreasonable expectations, along with an imbalanced approach in expressing feedback. Seemed like this person leaned heavily on cutting down people vs motivating with clear expectations, direction, and balanced praise/critiques
Overall, I think Braze has some deeply problematic practices that will, or at the very least could, hinder growth, retention, and scale. I think there are some very talented people working there, along with many tenured employees. I have worked at many fast paced, high impact organizations. I thought joining this organization would be a fruitful experience, but I didn't feel like there was much empathy, support, and grace given. Many resources were outdated in confluence, and trying to find documents in my team's google drive was overwhelming, as most folders were poorly named and contained outdated material.
I would have expected better organization and rigor around maintaining key content given an organization at this size. Seems like there may be some serious growing pains that need to be addressed on a more micro scale/departmental level.
At first things seemed very promising, however I very soon realized that the role, company operating style, and team culture was not the best fit for me.
