I will start with general culture by summarizing it as one of action oriented siloed-ness (good luck ever getting a clear answer to a question before your 4th attempt). This is in part due to the ever hungry acquisition mindset the company has to please the board which day to day for those on the ground just stirs up plenty of dust and causes constant fire drills to hurry up and do x, then hurry up and do y, only to find out things have changed and now you're doing z. Spoiler alert, take action on z with a grain of salt. Most people (90% unless they are senior management) don't take accountability or responsibility and emails will turn into circular spirals of passing the buck with 3-4 days going by and nothing ever getting accomplished unless you cc the 10% I mentioned above. The toxic culture for me also goes back to the narrow-minded focus on selling stuff. No company is successful without selling, that's common sense. However, I have never seen such an alarmingly horse with blinders approach to numbers at the expense of souring long-lasting client relationships that had been nurtured for years simply because we were "diligently" (really, obnoxiously) chasing a deal. This approach has also cost the company many talented, irreplaceable resources that just get "burnt out" and tired of never reaching completely unrealistic quotas. Pennywise and pound foolish for those that understand... For those that don't, enjoy wiping brown stains off your nose, drowning yourself in Kool-Aid and witnessing employee churn, the likes of which you've never seen before.
Hard work and accomplishment is done for yourself here. Expect high-fives and support here and there but again it's as fleeting as a mouse fart in the find. You are not what makes Diligent successful; rather a signature on a piece of paper to close a deal is what's gold and is prioritized more than anything else. I learned a lot and I grew a lot, for myself. And I used to lose sleep at night knowing that my hard work in building the client relationships I did, and closing the deals that I did, thousands of miles of travel and nights in the airport was for nothing else than appeasing senior management, Brian, and the board so they could line their wallets more and blindly increase their already unrealistic commercial goals. In the end my dedication, loyalty, and sacrifice was genuinely of no weight. Ever watch those natgeo documentaries of lions hunting wildebeest? If you are one of those wildebeest and you fall, the rest of the herd just keeps running mindlessly forward without ever stopping to reflect - same thing on the Diligent savanna.
