MANAGEMENT:
Podium's management has a domino effect, from the very top (Eric/ the founder), every person gets belittled by their higher-up and turns around and lets all their anger out onto whoever they are in charge of. SDRs are at the bottom of that chain and get torn apart constantly. Podium believes that their pickleball court and free breakfast cereal make up for that. During the month when my team was the top producing SDRs at 120% of our quota, we were yelled at, made fun of, and sworn at until our manager turned red in the face and spat at the camera. We were required to be on a Zoom call while we made out cold calls for hours, so management could ensure we were working. During meetings, SDRs are asked to keep working, making learning anything impossible. SDRS are asked to skip lunch, come in early and leave late, and avoid bathroom breaks to make quota. When reporting a software problem to my manger I was told that I was complaining. This lead me to having to find loopholes to get my non-negotiables done and
then I got in trouble for not following exactness.
SEXIST/TRADITIONAL WORK PLACE:
Working at Podium as a woman is very difficult. You oftentimes have to be harsh to be heard. The sexism is in the details, from only offering male clothing for spiffs to having women-only events where you are mansplained about what stocks are. Teams tend to be 5 to 1 when it comes to women, and it can feel very lonely and your experiences are oftentimes overlooked. One of my male coworkers in the same position as me took me into a private room to ridicule my appearance. I was told to dress in more fitting clothes like our other female coworkers and was given the prime example of one dressed in yoga pants and a tube top. He quoted, "She wears things that fit her body, and it makes her look very nice". He proceeded to tell me it would be impossible to promote without taking this advice and that he was just trying to help me. He added that I should be wearing makeup every day to work to make up for looking "sloppy". I was wearing jeans and a sweater and mascara.
HEALTH NEGLIGENCE:
During my time at Podium, there was a woman praised in our company-wide meeting for continuing to work while hospitalized, a man who was refused time off while his wife got in a brutal car accident, sicknesses rotated to everyone each month as few were allowed to take time off or even be allowed to work from home when very sick, my manager bragged about no longer feeling when she needed to go to the bathroom because she had trained herself to wait until after work, and a suicidal girl whose uncle just died was berated for not reaching quota. We were encouraged to push our brains and bodies past the breaking point, those who did were considered gold star podium employees.
COMPANIES POLICIES AND DETAILS:
At Podium, you are not allowed to take time off until you have worked there for 60 days. For any reason, including hospitalization. If it is unavoidable you are asked to work from home. Once you are allowed time off you earn 1 hour of time off per every pay period (two weeks). Which equates to about 8 days PTO. You can request non-paid time off but it is highly discouraged and rarely approved. As an SDR you are required to attend around 4 hours of meetings on an average day. You are required to make 45 qualified cold calls. Which disqualifies any call less than 1 minute long not including the ringing time, the same company can not be called twice even on different numbers to count, emails and other forms of contact are not counted, it does not include any calls that come in to you (inbound) even if you get a close from them, voicemails less than 1 minute don't count, and many more. It is very difficult to reach this number each day, especially when people are telling you to "remove them from the list" which Podium encourages you to not take them seriously unless they yell at you. You rotate through a maximum of 140 businesses (open or not) and have to find 45 of them every single day that meet all the needs to be a qualified call. If someone on your team does not reach their number, you are all asked to stay until you make up for it. Missing your number multiple days in a row puts you at risk of getting on a PIP, which more than often leads to you being fired. Each week and month you have to make "commitments" of how much money from closes you will get and how many deals you can close, making these commitments is like signing your blood to them. If you set something too low you are asked why and asked to change it, and if you set something too high you get verbally abused for delivering below your promises. Once you do achieve your goals, you are not celebrated but berated for not doing it sooner, the new expectation becomes a thousand clicks higher than the hardest thing you have ever achieved.
HIGHSCHOOL ATTITUDE:
There are different verticals you can work in at Podium. MedSpa, HVAC, Auto, Jewelry, etc. Each of these groups is physically separated in the building. Because of this, there is a severe division between them. It is clear as day who is in which vertical because of the way they dress and act, everyone in MedSpa has botox and wears Prada to work, whereas Auto employees come in hats and sweats each day. These groups are treated very differently and the expectations for each group vary drastically. It feels like a typical movie about high school where the jocks hate the nerds and they all stand in their corner dressed in their matching outfits. Each vertical openly talks down on the others, and it is widely accepted behavior at Podium. People talk about their birthday parties in front of everyone, like fifth graders, and make sure to mention that it is an invite-only party. Everyone greets each other by complimenting their hair and shoes it is very clear that those who do not dress like this are seen as gross or less valued. It literally fees just like highschool. You will have conversations or meetings with the higher-ups of the company, and the next day it will be only you two in the elevator and they will ask your name. They don't care about you enough to remember they talked to you yesterday for an hour. All they see is how much money you make them.
I have screenshots of every conversation I shared in this review. Unfortunately, Glassdoor does not let me add them. I could not recommend Podium less to anyone who is looking for a caring, safe, collaborative environment for long-term work.
