Product and vision strong, but culture deeply flawed
Pros
What Collibra genuinely does well is anything connected to the product, the customer, and the broader vision of where the industry is heading. The platform itself is highly differentiated in the market, and with the explosion of AI, governance, data quality, lineage, and trust in enterprise data have become significantly more important than they were even a few years ago. You can tell the company understands that shift and is positioning itself around a problem that organizations are actively trying to solve.
Cons
Where Collibra has significant issues is workplace culture. And honestly, calling it “challenging” or “fast-paced” would be underselling the reality of what many employees experience. The culture has become deeply performative, political, and fear-driven in ways that make it difficult for people to do their best work consistently. There is also growing anxiety across the company tied to the strategy-less adoption of AI initiatives, with many employees increasingly worried that leadership is pursuing automation without a clear vision or communication plan, leaving people fearful about the long-term security of their roles. This fear-driven environment manifests in troubling ways across the organisation, including situations where employees feel they cannot safely raise concerns through the appropriate channels. A major example of this is the relationship employees have with HR and leadership. Instead of functioning as a department that employees trust to support healthy culture, fairness, and development, there is a widespread fear of speaking openly. That fear becomes obvious during engagement survey cycles. As a manager, I recently had another manager’s employee come to me and share that during a team meeting their manager was asking who had submitted specific comments in the survey. Tying back to the lack of faith in HR, the employee specifically asked me not to go to HR because they feared retaliation and said they simply wanted an outlet to express their frustration. Even as a manager, I share some of those concerns and can honestly say I felt quite relieved when they asked me not to elevate the matter to HR, which in itself speaks to the level of apprehension that exists around involving the department. This is unacceptable and highlights a serious lack of trust in the systems that are supposed to protect and support employees. Fear of retaliation is what inspired me to leave this anonymous comment, in the hope that raising these concerns candidly might help inspire meaningful change. Career progression is another major frustration point. Advancement often feels far more dependent on visibility, networking, and internal politics than measurable performance or results. Many employees quickly realise that the level they are hired into is likely the level they will remain at for years unless they are closely connected to the right people or leaders. That creates a culture where employees become discouraged, and it becomes increasingly difficult to keep people engaged when they know there is little to no realistic chance for promotion, because strong output alone does not appear to translate into meaningful growth opportunities. There’s also an exhausting expectation to constantly project positivity and enthusiasm regardless of what is happening organisationally. Employees are expected to embrace every initiative, every reorganisation, and every new strategic shift publicly, even when morale is clearly low. Over time, that creates an environment where authenticity disappears and people become more focused on managing perception than solving problems honestly. The frustrating part is that there are genuinely talented, intelligent, and passionate people throughout the company. Many teams work incredibly hard and care deeply about customers and the product. But the broader culture increasingly undermines those strengths instead of enabling them.