Pros
1010data used to be a special place. The founders, who built a SaaS product in the ’90s before that was even a term, were hands-on mentors for everyone in the organization. Employees had grit and a true passion for their work. The product was differentiated in a way that caused prospects’ jaws to hit the floor during demos.
Cons
1010data is no longer a special place. The founders grew out of touch with the present and have stepped away from the organization. The executive team that stepped up in their wake made more than a few poorly informed decisions that drove a once successful business into dire straits. That being said, there’s been so much churn in the executive tier in the last 12-18 months that there is nearly nobody left who actually understands what the company does and why the customers cared about the product. The focus for the past year has been on cutting costs with little to no regard for how it will impact the product or the company in anything beyond the immediate term. Three rounds of layoffs happened in fewer than four months and they wonder why most of the talented staff found the exits in the ensuing months... That, of course, brings up the most painful transition 1010data has gone through in the last couple of years. Even before the layoffs, the company knew it was having a problem with employee retention and churn. The enthusiastic, brilliant, driven people who made 1010data a force to be reckoned with have all but left, they were leaving well before it was visibly obvious that the company was on fire and they continue to leave by the week. A few folks have stuck around, but there has been so much turnover that some external customers and partners literally don’t know who to reach out to because all of their points of contact have left. The people at 1010data were the company’s soul and that soul is now hollow. The company can try to fill the gap with offshore consultants, but that isn’t working because of the technology... The most pressing issue to date is likely that while 1010data was unbelievably prescient in the early 00’s and a performance leader in the early 10’s, its product vision has become unfocused and dated. The company’s proprietary technology made a lot of sense 10+ years ago but is now a ball and chain that slows down their teams, makes hiring all but impossible, and makes external consultants useless. The recent effort to pivot to building solutions on a modern technology stack is hampered by a lack of internal expertise coupled with the fact that they’re no longer offering anything novel. After their 2015 acquisition, they wandered blindly without focus until they had lost all momentum. 1010data was a great company that loved its employees, rewarded them for stepping up, and generated real value for their customers. These days they browbeat employees for failures largely out of their control and offer some vertical-specific analytic expertise encumbered by clumsy technology.