My experience within the Google category at Softchoice was unfortunately one of the most disappointing experiences of my career in tech sales.
The biggest issue was the gap between what was promised during the interview process and the reality of the role once onboarding began. During recruiting, outbound AEs were told we would have dedicated BDR partnership and strong pre-sales support to help progress and close opportunities. In reality, neither materialized in practice.
For nearly a year, the outbound AE team operated without the BDR support that had been discussed during hiring. Once leadership realized the new outbound Google motion was struggling and no AEs had successfully closed business yet, the entire team was placed on PIPs. Only after that did leadership introduce offshore BDR support across completely different time zones, which created even more communication and alignment issues.
Pre-sales support was another major disappointment. Demos frequently felt underprepared and disconnected, and instead of feeling like a unified revenue organization, it often felt like pre-sales, partnerships, leadership, and AEs were all operating independently with little real strategy or collaboration behind the scenes.
The culture itself felt highly political, cliquish, and condescending toward frontline sales teams. I’ve worked in aggressive, performance-driven environments before and have no issue with accountability or pressure, but there’s a major difference between a high-performance culture and an organization that lacks operational alignment, enablement, and leadership accountability.
What also stood out was the constant internal negativity toward Google itself, which was surprising considering this was supposed to be a Google-focused organization. Leadership frequently made comments that came across as resentful toward Google Direct teams and younger Googlers, which created a strange environment for people who joined motivated to build strong relationships within the Google ecosystem.
The overall leadership style within the Google category felt outdated and unpolished for a modern cloud organization. Rather than feeling inspired, coached, or developed, many interactions felt dismissive, reactive, and morale-draining.
What made the experience especially frustrating was that this was still a relatively new Google practice with a brand-new outbound motion. Instead of acknowledging organizational growing pains and adjusting strategy, leadership ultimately placed the AE team on PIPs and later terminated the entire outbound AE organization on the same day.
I learned from the experience, but overall it felt like a very disorganized and poorly led cloud sales organization. I would not recommend the Google category at Softchoice to sellers looking for strong mentorship, operational maturity, strategic leadership, or a collaborative modern tech culture.
