growing company churns and burns - Anonymous employee SmartZip Analytics Employee Review

In most departments the pay rate is significantly lower than other comparable jobs at similarly sized companies in the Silicon Valley. This lack of a competitive wage is seems to impact why the product upgrades take so long, bugs don't get fixed quickly, customer data isn't reflecting what they were sold... The good engineers go to other companies. Meanwhile, the sales people and customer support staff turn over so quickly due to their unacceptably low pay rates (by Bay Area standards) coupled with a heavy workload. These things take a toll on the clients as they are paying for services that are generally being worked really hard on, but that often become more of a 'hot potato' - passing the buck to others in the office while issues aren't being resolved. The sales people here even can have compensation from commission reversed pretty much at any point in time after they've closed / been paid on a deal if the client ignores their contract and stops paying. This happens a lot. All work travel (hotels, airfare, etc) comes at the expense of the employee who has to await reimbursement. Travel is an expected part of the job and there is an overarching sentiment among the upper management that an employee is not trying very hard if they can't travel. Very little room for advancement. Work/life balance is generally used as a selling point to potential new employees but watch out. Especially if you are on the sales team, taking personal time (no matter the reason for taking it) will always be treated as a good thing - until you return from said personal time. Overall, there seemed to be a trend toward maintaining favorable optics of the office, product, and the jobs themselves. Bottom line: in just about every way, this company looks better from the outside than it really is on the inside.