Things have changed quite a bit over the last several months, and it’s sad to say – this place isn’t as great as it once was.
Compensation is now far lower than many similar stage companies in the SF Bay Area (48% below national average for Enterprise Account Executives, according to Glassdoor's own data) and worse, we just received our compensation package for the first quarter of 2016 (2 months late), my quota has tripled from last year and my commission rate has been cut by 50%. This means I literally have to sell 3x what I sold last year to make the same amount of money. Everyone in sales understands that quotas will go up each year and at a start-up like Glassdoor, commission rates will go down – but this is painful. Glassdoor has a model that punishes people who perform at a high level. Instead of rewarding the best, Glassdoor uses a formula that makes everyone’s on-target-earnings the exact same – which means that if you are terrific at your job and have years of experience, you have to sell more 2-3x what someone who started last week has to sell to make the exact same amount of money. It feels like this model is a short-sighted blitzkrieg to cut costs for an IPO, but will lead the most senior talent to quit, which will be much more challenging for Glassdoor long after the "funding event" that is "going public". It is quite strange considering we preach nothing but culture, transparency, and keeping employees happy - yet our recent actions defy all of that logic.
Sales Operations has been a true pain to work with over the last several months. It seems like they get thrills on kicking deals back to us after the sale, asking us to get amendments signed and new paperwork completed. This is needed on almost every deal because it's difficult to create a quote and agreement correctly. Now, it takes multiple days of approvals at several levels to process quotes and send agreements - and as mentioned, it still doesn't work right.
There are a lot of questions around territories right now - a major important part of the sales structure that feels like it was neglected. What’s most painful is that the way territories will be divided is based on a scoring methodology that is inaccurate. Many people have of anxiety around what our territories will look like in just a few weeks.
Morale on the sales floor is low; many feel defeated with our new comp plans – with anxiety/ uncertainty about how things will be moving forward. I feel like I am in a bad situation, but when I hear about how bad other reps quotas and commissions got hit, I cringe.
