Mar 3, 2019
Intercom Response
7yTo the author:
Hey. Very sorry to see you’re feeling this way. I always loved having you around and have fond memories of the fun times. I’m wishing you the very best. Would love if our paths crossed in the future. Feel free to reach out to me any time. You know where to find me.
To the reader:
For some context, we unfortunately had to let this person go. I didn’t hear that there was this much upset over that.
That said, there is some truth to some of their points.
Regarding “CEO regularly answers questions with ‘we’re working on it’…”:
I guess it depends on your perspective. Just last week I had someone who was here 4 years on their last day tell me just how much insane progress we had made on these and other issues. It’s true though that when questions come up at All Hands I’ll frequently let people know the way in which we’re thinking about those issues and how we want to address them, well ahead of having specific plans to put action in place. I need to better set expectations. There indeed are SO MANY areas that have SO MUCH room for improvement. I’m really excited to work on these things. The next few years will see some significant leveling up in how we work as an organization. We’ve just added some great execs that are already making material progress.
Regarding product and engineering in SF:
Every company has their strengths and weaknesses. Intercom’s strengths by far are in software development. It was founded by 4 people who studied CS with a simple desire to build cool tech. Read a few of our hundreds of posts about product and strategy, come to one of our events, talk to some of our engineers. You’ll get it instantly.
We have three offices which do software development. Dublin (7.5 years old), London (18 months old), SF (~2 years old). Dublin was started by the founders. It’s humming. People are highly engaged and super productive. Shipping incredible work. Our last engagement survey scored over 80% in that office. London similarly is killing it. It’s an incredible bunch of people. They got up to speed so fact. They also scored north of 80%. Importantly, London was seeded by Dublin folks. But unfortunately SF was an independent group that grew out of our former growth team and was only recently absorbed into our global R&D org 6 months ago. Before then we had a couple missteps with leaders and managers and definitely struggled to have SF and Dublin work together well. This is all changing rapidly. We have been discussing at our exec team offsite this week, and our global heads of Product and Engineering who built Dublin and London are in town making changes and big plans for the future of SF R&D.
Personally I am EXTREMELLY bullish on the future of SF R&D. There is already great things happening there, lots of amazing people, a couple new leaders coming on-board. Give it 2-3 quarters.