Do Not Join - Sinking Ship - Account Executive Smartsheet Employee Review

1.0
12 Mar 2025
Recommend
CEO approval
Business outlook

Pros

I worked at the company for 5+ years and used to love the people, culture, and product. Now, it has all fallen apart. Only pro: remote work

Cons

1) Sales Leadership -In sales, some of the front line and skip level leadership is awesome, some are horrible. -Over the last 3/6 months, most of the good leaders have been forced out or chosen to leave on their own. With a few exceptions, those still left - new sales leadership at the upper levels is horrible. Unrealistic expectation, do not care about their employees, do not understand the product or the market, running old tired playbooks that failed at their prior companies 2) Sales Peers - The majority of good, smart, successful AEs have left the company over the last 3-6 months. Huge departure in talent has hurt culture and institutional knowledge. 3) Pricing Model Changes & Customer Churn -Smartsheet recently changed their pricing model. For most customers this means they are being hit with 20-70% price increases for the same product with the same product and no additional value. This is leading to a ton of churn. On top of that, AEs now have a net retention metric added into their comp plans. -the backend tools that calculate new product cost for customers are broken, leading to overcharging customers event more than the planned hikes (in some cases as much as a 400% price hike. Leadership has had to back off forcing the largest customer to migrate to new pricing model for fear of churn, but is still full speed ahead with the knowingly broken model for non Large Enterprise customers. 4) Private Equity Sale -Private Equity bought the company and delisted it from the public stock exchange. -no More RSUs as part of comp package, comp was not adjusted to make up the difference. -even when RSUs were still being awarded, below average comp by industry standards. 5) Product -Product is directionless and has fallen behind -competitors caught up to Smartsheets product offering about 2 years ago and have slowly but surely been chipping away at Smartsheets marketshare. -smartsheet is now outdated, more expensive, harder to use, has more difficult customer onboarding, and is inferior to several other competitors. Customers are taking note. Harder to land new business, churn from existing customers is way up -Product leadership has been hallowed out. The leadership left has no vision and is just trying to keep the lights on. -product has not shipped new impactful features in months

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Smartsheet Response
1y
Thank you for taking the time to share your feedback. First, we want to acknowledge and thank you for your 5 years with the company, your contributions and dedication are appreciated. We're sorry to hear that your experience changed over time, and we take concerns like yours seriously. The past year has brought significant change as we've worked to evolve our go-to-market strategy and better support our customers in a competitive and fast-moving space. While change can be difficult, we recognize the impact it has on our employees and teams. Regarding pricing and product direction — we understand the challenges raised. Our goal with the updated USM is to deliver greater long-term value and flexibility for our customers by providing our customers with a more transparent pricing experience, as well as a way to better manage their subscriptions. We also take customer feedback on this new model very seriously. We are constantly striving to improve our product to ensure our customers are happy, and we’ve rolled out new product enhancements just this month, such as a new creating experience and custom dashboard theming. This success is what led us to be recognized as a Leader in Collaborative Work Management for two years in a row. Thank you again for all of your feedback.

Explore other reviews about Smartsheet

5.0
11 June 2026
Recommend
CEO approval
Business outlook

Pros

Great collaborative environment and competitive

Cons

Easily overwhelmed with phone calls, chats, and emails.

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Smartsheet Response
2w
We're so happy to hear that you're happy here! Collaboration with a healthy dose of competition is always great to hear, thank you for your review!
1.0
26 May 2026
Recommend
CEO approval
Business outlook

Pros

Supportive of AI tooling. I had a great manager. I heard the severance packages are great, but I left of my own volition, so I don’t have personal experience.

Cons

Complete lack of direction or management at the mid to high levels of the company in product and engineering (most everyone left or was pushed out by cronyism from the private equity acquisition). No more equity offered to employees. No opportunities for promotion. They’ve shipped or are shipping most of the core products (including the core “sheet” aka Grid app) to India and have laid off tons of employees (somewhere between 12% and 15% of the company). Upper management did the thing where they had the US developers interview tons of people out of India, and then about half a year later laid off tons US developers, including several of the people that did the interviews. Upper management said that the India teams would be working on other projects, but clearly that was a lie. They laid off people without consulting their managers, or their manager’s managers, and without knowing what team they actually worked on or what they did. So entire teams were laid off unbeknownst to them. Very quick and poor handoffs to India, if any. You will likely be working on multiple teams at once, or moved to multiple teams during your time there in short periods of time. On-call can be a nightmare. There is no culture of any kind. Basically do not work here, whether you’re out of the US, India, or Bulgaria (the main countries for developers).

1
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Smartsheet Response
4w
Thank you for your honesty. While we’re glad that you had a great team and the tools you needed, it’s incredibly tough to hear that other aspects of your experience were less than great. To your point about equity, we’d like to clarify that we do offer a limited equity pool with specific eligibility. That said, navigating transition is already tough, and adding in other aspects like global shifts and new leadership can make it feel even harder. We know the dust hasn’t completely settled, and we understand that we have a lot of work to do to repair employee trust and morale. We’ve set off on that journey, and we appreciate all of this feedback along the way. Thank you, and we wish you all the best in your next chapter.
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