Cause: Previous Chief Product Officer makes promises 3 years ago that the organization simply cannot deliver. Product strategy changes multiple times per year giving our customers the impression that we are either elusive with the truth or incompetent.
Effect: Previous CPO is separated from the business and the CEO brings in new leadership team, namely the current COO. The new COO manages from a place of fear and power under the shroud of being a ‘good, successful guy.’ He changes compensation rules MULTIPLE times per year to benefit the company, so much so that Sales can’t even keep track of whether or not they are managing under current rules. He berates Leadership for advocating for their employees and lets them know it will be ‘career limiting’ to advocate further. He brings in ‘his guy’ to run Revenue Operations. His mission is to claw back and not pay every rep he possibly can so that he can hit his savings targets. Multiple deals that were signed in 2023 are now deemed as disqualified even though they met the multiple rounds of rules in 2023 and we are made to ‘pay back’ the company for deals we signed in good faith in a PRIOR year.
Effect: Product spends the next 3 years making this “Neurons” Platform a reality. In turn, strong point-solutions suffer, both from an innovation perspective AND a security perspective.
Effect: Early 2024, MULTIPLE 0-day CVEs are announced. Account Managers, customer-facing team members and leadership do what we can to support our clients through this. MOST of them choose to move on and reasonably so. New deals (my entire path to hit my # for the year) are negatively impacted by the security announcements, and rightfully so. If I were a customer, I would walk away too.
Effect: Sales targets are not adjusted at all due to all of these moving parts that Sales has zero control over. Sales now has to ‘rewrap’ current revenue under new SKUs to count as qualified revenue for quota credit. (It’s NOT new revenue.) Those that don’t have large renewals that can be re-wrapped are questioned, demeaned and ultimately, ran out of the company.
Yeah, 'great' company to work for.
