Pros
Most of my coworkers were pretty cool. Benefits were OK.
Cons
Oh man where to even start. I’ve been wanting to write this for a while and I finally have a reason to. I was just fired from my first position ever, and think if I don’t write this now, I never will. I do not want someone else to go through what I have the past year. Also awaiting the corporate response that will inevitably reply not addressing anything I’m saying. After a year and a couple of months working for Brightly, I learned what ruling by fear looks like or rather what living under it looks like. I joined right after the acquisition by Siemens, and during my interview process I was told this was a good move away from Venture Capital as SIemens had a longer view and would theoretically want to develop talent rather than the cycle of hiring and firing that was happening before. I was told it takes most people a year or more to get the hang of the position, and that I would be allowed that time to learn the product, learn the tools, and learn the personas that we were selling into. Turns out all of that was completely wrong, and that some of the problems around top down pressure would be exacerbated by the acquisition of Brightly into Siemens. During the interview process I asked why the old AE’s were let go after only a year, they said because they were doing things like logging fake calls and were not trying. I took that information but it was still somewhat of a red flag for me, this is sales after all. I would not be making that same mistake. But for a sales cycle that is anywhere from 2-4 months, and with training factored in I was almost immediately concerned for my job where I must start producing right away. This was to be a trend, as it took almost a month from my start date to even get accounts to be able to start prospecting into. The ramp to full quota was 3 months long, so after a month of “training” and watching demos, and factoring in the sales cycle, not to mention developing an entire pipeline from scratch, I was worried. When I finally did get my accounts, it appeared I was left the scraps from the AE’s that were there before. I resolved myself to prospect as hard as I could, making it a goal to lead the team in activities almost every day. Bad sales people complain about the territory, I thought. But I kept on trying, but at the end of 3 months I had booked a few discovery calls that were not close to closing. My manager put me at ease saying “even if you don’t close anything you will be OK” or something to that effect, when I relayed my concerns to him. From the moment I started I saw some signs. The lackluster training and support for a start. Training was basically, only process oriented at the most basic possible level, how to set up a discovery call etc. I received no product training other than to be told to watch demos and listen to calls with no guidance other than what I found myself. I felt lost without the context of what I was watching. My manager was also fairly new, new to sales and sales management, and I was optimistic that he would start more coaching / development as he was getting used to the position. Well that never happened. I took it upon myself to bring him calls for feedback and coaching trying desperately to improve on my messaging, I reached out to top performers on the team. I will say I liked everyone on my team, but it is unfair to rely on them for that missing development long term. The only feedback I would get on these 1on1’s was “try to connect with them personally,” and “smile while you’re on the phone.” I kept pushing for development in team settings, but in the end we would end up talking about our forecast almost every 1on1 and team meeting. I think this is partly due to all of the pressure that management was feeling from the top, but as a brand new rep, I was feeling anything but supported during my first few months. Fast forward a few months: still leading the team in activity, still struggling to close anything. I am now 8 months in and still figuring out everything on my own. I’ve lost a few deals and my anxiety is at an all time high. That is when I was informed I was going to be placed on a PIP, where my goal was to close 50% of my quota and create more opportunities. I was set to take my first vacation in 8 months that I told them about before I was even hired. My manager “forgot about it” while I was having my meeting going over my PIP. I ended up spending 2 weeks the most stressed out I have ever been, hardly able to decompress from a stressful job. I ended up beating the PIP and by closing my first 3 deals, and with a decent pipeline heading into the last quarter of the year, was somewhat optimistic about the future. I continued to close business, even winning a few sales awards for highest sales within my first year. I was still only 50% to goal though and was still concerned. That is when I stopped getting leads from the BDR team. I was getting 1 every couple of months, where others were getting 5-6 every month. I realized I needed more of my own opps, but during ramp it is nice to be supplemented. I pushed for more insight on how leads are distributed. Nothing ever happened and since then I received 1 BDR supported lead in the past 3 months, and they ended up not showing to the demo. I also kept pushing for a cleaning up of territory and internal database of our leads, probably 30% of my territory was closed for business, was unrelated to my vertical, or was actually an account under someone else’s name. When I brought this up I was told to make a list of the problem accounts, a large task in addition to my already busy schedule of making 30-40 calls a day, running meetings, forecasting, meeting internally, etc. When territory was finally supposed to be redistributed, I was let go. No warnings, just a call from my boss on the first day of our fiscal year, today. I closed 2 deals last week that I hoped was going to buy me time to create the pipeline I needed. Out of the 4 people I started with and went through training with, all in the same vertical, all of them have been PIP’d. The 3 AE positions that were there prior, all lasted a year and were PIP’d as well. And I am still here thinking what I could have done differently. I’m sure that I could have tried harder, hit the ground running faster, and just been better in general, but I know I had what it took to succeed in this role, all I needed was some support. Support that was missing from the jump. Now myself and the 3 others I started with are all in the same position we were in a year ago. All of this is to say, don’t work here unless you are extremely desperate, don’t waste a year of your life being stressed all the time, being tied to your computer 24/7 and in a worse position than you started in. Just don’t.