I've broken the review up as best I can with the formatting options available. Apologies for any confusion.
(Management and employee care issues)
Zero care for employees, ALL departments are extremely burnt out and lack of acknowledgement from leadership. Constant restructures and moving of the goal posts is the norm. Commissions are heavily geared against the employees.
There's no strategical reasoning on the differences between regions when rolling out changes. The constant chase for more top of funnel revenue breeds decisions that negatively impact our customers and employees.
Promotions given to people who are not prepared/suited for X job causing massive strains and issues. Employees better suited for promotions/leadership are constantly ignored in favour of longer tenure employees. 0 enablement for employees promoted into leadership roles.
Additionally, the internal promotion system is, well, completely horrific, a points based system that automatically puts employees on performance management if they don't hit X numbers. Stemming from this, the performance management does more to harm the employee than actually help them perform. If you do exceed targets every month then you're rewarded with a pay increase the equivalent of finding a $5 note on the floor every couple of months.
I would comment on the company culture, but alas, it's basically non-existent at this point. The office used to be a fun place to work however, it now feels like you're working in a lab, not even like a cool science lab, but like a recently defunded lab run by people who are a hair away from drinking the "research chemicals" and calling it quits.
(The product offering)
The retail platform now out prices all direct competitors and fundamentally offers less, the removal of support for retail customers unless they spend an eye watering amount is a testament to the above.
The hospitality platform's, although both being lightspeed products, fundamentally compete with each other making it extremely unclear for sales reps and customers to understand what the difference it. The internal processes that accompany this are also fundamentally different which I'll expand on further down.
Regardless of the vertical, you are forced to use Lightspeeds Merchant Services. Sure, this is something a lot of POS platforms do and would typically be seen as a normal byproduct of a shareholder lead company. However, the fact that the hardware you are forced to use is absolutely abysmal in quality, and regularly leaves merchants unable to process transactions is quite frankly, appalling and blatant fraud compared to what the sales team is forced to sell them on. If you're paying attention you'll notice I used the word “Forced” numerous times above, this is because there is no better way to label what Lightspeed is doing to both their employees and customers alike.
(Internal processes & platforms)
Internal platforms and processes are akin to spaghetti, major disconnects between verticals causes constant issues when trying to complete the most basic of tasks. An ungodly amount of support Slack channels accompany this.
Platform license are randomly removed by the IS team with 0 explanation, causing weeks of back and forth via a chat system just to get it back. This hampers employee performance and adds another layer of stress.
Now I'm yet to find a company with a “perfect” Salesforce instance, so I try not to comment as it's not an easy thing to do. However, Lightspeed have somehow managed to subvert baseline expectations and create an amalgamation of Salesforce instances smashed into one that takes all predefined meaning of “Usable”, throws it out the window, runs it over with a truck, and ritualistically sacrifices it to the shareholders, and then proceeds to email all employees saying how “Successful our CRM initiative is”.
(Closing notes)
Employees are just, put plainly, not equipped to succeed at lightspeed. Support systems are all over the place, tools needed to perform their role adequately are with held or removed by some last minute budget decision. Targets might as well be spun out of thin air and are accompanied by 0 explanation or reasoning on how they reached this mystical number. You're often left wondering how long you'll last here before the “promotion system” puts you on a Performance plan and kicks you out the door (Which honestly, could be doing you a favour).
Lightspeed excels at acquiring small thriving companies with a rich culture and fine-tuned processes, and then proceeding to gut them of everything that made them successful, leaving a trail of burnt out employees and evaporating company culture. Retention of employees IS NOT a priority for them, the remuneration is below market average and the commission is laughable.
There has also been a noticeable exodus of any key senior level management over the past 10 months, take from that what you will.
If you can, stay away from this company, find somewhere that respects you as a human being and a core contributor, you deserve to be more than a number on a spreadsheet.
