Gainsight reviews

4.1

81% would recommend to a friend

(718 total reviews)
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Chuck Ganapathi

86% approve of CEO

62% positive business outlook

Gainsight has an employee rating of 4.1 out of 5 stars, based on 718 company reviews on Glassdoor which indicates that most employees have an excellent working experience there. The Gainsight employee rating is in line with the average (within 1 standard deviation) for employers within the Information Technology industry (3.9 stars).

Reviews by job title

718 reviews
2.0
Oct 11, 2016

Increasingly frustrating and disappointing

Anonymous employee
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

Fast growing company that is the clear industry leader. Great product and peers!

Cons

Unfortunately, the recent post entitled "Modern Day Sweatshop" has the cold, hard facts right. For many, this company has become an unpleasant place to work, with no work-life balance and a prevailing sense of anxiety and discouragement. While employees in certain departments are clearly very happy and feel respected and valued, many (if not the majority) that are under one leader are not. That cross-functional team is subject to heavy-handed management that frequently circulates statements and "tips" across the organization which come across as extremely condescending, a bit threatening and often appear to be targeted toward a specific person or group, leaving one wondering "Who is it? Is it me?" It's a shame to rule a very talented, dedicated and hard working group through scare tactics and create such a stressful environment. There are no performance reviews to help employees understand how they are doing and how they can improve, and there is no process for periodic salary increases. Unlimited PTO, which would ordinarily be a big "pro," can't be taken advantage of because of the pressure and workload. The company value of "Success for all" in reality is "Success for some." I could not give a 1 star rating because I know some departments are well managed.

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Gainsight Response
9y
Thank you so much for your thoughtful feedback. It's obvious that you care a lot about our company. I'm sorry we didn't live up to our values to you - particularly in delivering the Teammate Success part of Success for All. I want to take a few minutes to acknowledge your points. "Unfortunately, the recent post entitled "Modern Day Sweatshop" has the cold, hard facts right. For many, this company has become an unpleasant place to work, with no work-life balance and a prevailing sense of anxiety and discouragement. While employees in certain departments are clearly very happy and feel respected and valued, many (if not the majority) that are under one leader are not. That cross-functional team is subject to heavy-handed management that frequently circulates statements and "tips" across the organization which come across as extremely condescending, a bit threatening and often appear to be targeted toward a specific person or group, leaving one wondering "Who is it? Is it me?" It's a shame to rule a very talented, dedicated and hard working group through scare tactics and create such a stressful environment." As I mentioned in another post, I did an "Ask Me Anything" (AMA) on 11/2/2016 and said that it pains me that we've delivered this kind of experience to you. I've thought about your post many times over the last few weeks. It's a double failure on my part - that we caused you this pain and that I didn't respond sooner. In your words, I hear frustration around work-life balance and anxiety/discouragement. Both issues are personally important to me. I will admit that work-life balance has gotten more challenging as we've moved up market but we need to work on methods to address this. I committed to doing roundtables with all first year employees in the next 2-3 weeks and setup an anonymous feedback system to dive into these issues in more detail. Perhaps more important to me though than even those very critical issues is anxiety. We didn't deliver on the Golden Rule for you, as you suggest further below. We didn't treat you the way I'd want to be treated. And I know that anxiety and fear make any situation many times worse. To me, the starting point (but not the end) of fixing this is understanding, which is why I'm so focused on listening and learning in the coming weeks. That in itself isn't the answer, but I think it will open up more trust - or at least I hope it will! I realize none of this helps you but I want you to know that your thoughtful words will help many of your former teammates. "There are no performance reviews to help employees understand how they are doing and how they can improve, and there is no process for periodic salary increases. Unlimited PTO, which would ordinarily be a big "pro," can't be taken advantage of because of the pressure and workload." We definitely need to create a formal feedback system and we are taking that on as an OKR for Q4 and Q1. On unlimited PTO, this is something I've been thinking about too. I want to find more ways to encourage it and give people space for it - I'll be looking for ideas around this. As you may know, I definitely take time off for my family and I want everyone to do the same (for whatever they choose). The company value of "Success for all" in reality is "Success for some." I could not give a 1 star rating because I know some departments are well managed. While the feedback is tough, our values are everything, so if we are missing on them, we need to be held accountable (and hold ourselves accountable). Thank you for doing that. Advice to Management Make sure that everyone, no matter what their position, understands and embraces the concept of "The Golden Rule." Agreed. This is personally important to me. I'm very sorry for your experience but thank you immensely for the input. If can ever repay the favor, I'd be glad to. Nick Mehta, CEO
1.0
Jun 27, 2017

No Progression and Management and VPs Can't See Flaws

Anonymous employee
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

-Unlimited PTO (which very few take) -Catered Lunches -Relaxed Work From Home Policy

Cons

-Removed 401k Match for better health insurance. I understand the tradeoff, however most of the employees are young and would MUCH prefer a 401k match. -Double standards for promotion review process. For example, recently someone was promoted to a VP in a matter of days, however getting promoted as an individual contributor will take months if you're lucky. -Pay is way below market which has been proven with data, however nobody will address it. -The same ~5 people solve all the issues. The others are just there to never progress and lean on those same people. This leads to fatigue, obviously. -No option to progress as an individual contributor because all management looks for are "change agents". The true "change agents" are the ones doing the work day to day, putting in 60+ hours a week quarter over quarter while execs and managers have "strategic thinking and no meeting" blocks on their calendar for hours a week. -All execs are in one office. No VPs in one office which leads to no progression, career advancement or face time with execs (except for the once a quarter they may swing by for 1/2 a day) -Constant reorgs of the post sales team. No consequences for poor choices made by VPs and above. The poor choices just mean the same core individual contributors have to pick up the slack as always. -The constant reorgs mean that you are consistently having to prove yourself to mangers over and over again which leads to no advancement and a "let's talk in a quarter" attitude. -Time constraints are not great. We have a distributed employee approach which means calls with India at 6am and midnight. Hope you don't have a personal life or free evenings because you'll be working late most nights. -Did I mention the pay is way under market?

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Gainsight Response
8y
First of all, thank you for writing this. While I've done a poor job driving success for you, I can tell you care and want Gainsight to be better. Second, you are 100% right. While your experience may not be the same as everyone else's (and I'm not saying that critically - just focusing on yours), your experience is your own and that means we have failed you. Third, on that note, I saw your post on Friday and didn't stop thinking about it all weekend. To be honest, any time a teammate, a teammate's family member, a customer or an investor has a bad experience with Gainsight, it's like a dagger to my heart - a sign of my personal failure. While you listed that you approve of my personal performance, I do not approve of my performance in your case, in that I have failed to deliver for you. I own that. But thanks to your concern and constructive input, I don't have to wallow in that failure forever - I can get started on fixing it. A few broad points in response to your post: 1. I do want to bring data to bear where possible to assess broader themes. As you may know, our CCO runs a monthly Teammate Success NPS survey in the post-sales team (which we'll expand eventually to the entire company). In addition, you are probably aware that I do regular "roundtables" with 4-6 teammates at a time (including 6 a week ago in St. Louis with ~40 people total). Some points I hear are consistent with your observations and some are unique. 2. That being said, no matter what the data shows broadly, your experience is your own and data doesn't take away from that - or from the work we have to do. 3. A massive "root cause" of these issues (in my opinion) is that we have an open req for a VP Teammate Success and it's taken a while to hire the right person (100% on me but I'm actively working on it). 4. On the flip side, another deep point underlying your comments is the fact that we want to embrace a truly geographically distributed culture at Gainsight. You rightly point out some areas where we fail at living up to that, so thank you for shining a light on areas where I need to improve. Glassdoor has a character limit so I'll include brief responses on each point: * Unlimited PTO usage: I haven't seen data as to whether very few take it (we don't track but should), but I know we need to do more to encourage. I try to share my vacations in transparency. I think we can do more here vis-a-vis recognizing people for taking PTO. * 401K match: I haven't seen data that most of our employees are young across all offices but regardless, we increased healthcare and dropped matching to be competitive with other cos of our stage. In addition, I do believe startups often end up being "age biased" and I want to be a welcoming place for those with families and those of all ages. I recognize this doesn't help you though, and I'm sorry for that. * Market pay: We did a study a year ago and one of the top priorities of the new VP will be to refresh data and adjust as data indicates. Thanks for highlighting this. * Promotion time: I checked on the VP you mentioned; first request from exec to promote VP was 3 months before promotion. Our promotion process is deliberately long to ensure parity but I recognize how that can be frustrating and I'm sorry for that. * Same 5 people solve issues / execs in one office: We need to get more diverse in our decision making. We are hiring a VP Services and plan to have that person spend a huge chunk of time in our St. Louis office. I am actively looking at VP Teammate Success candidates in St. Louis. As you may know, our CMO moved to NYC which will help make us less California-centric as an exec team. We need to do more here - great point. * Constant reorgs: I do think growing companies reorganize regularly to align to new needs so I don't shy away from that. I also think a reorg doesn't mean the old org was wrong - usually every org structure is good for some things and bad for others. But we need better institutional memory to make sure careers progress through org changes - big part of new VP TS' job. * Time zones: I hear you on this one and I also think it's a core part of our model. Many startups with Bay Area funding assume the only place to hire is in Silicon Valley. We have embraced a distributed model which means we can give opportunity to folks everywhere but it comes at a communication / time zone cost. I think we can get more efficient to reduce the burden though so I look forward to brainstorming on this. BTW I think coordination with Indian time zones affects some roles in GS a lot but not all. Can't thank you enough for writing this. Only by pushing - even in critical ways - will Gainsight become the company we all want it to be.
1.0
Jan 18, 2017

Negative environment

Anonymous employee
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

- The company itself has shown solid progression in the marketplace. - Certain departments/leaders show promise.

Cons

After taking a lot of time to contemplate my sentiment towards Gainsight after leaving the company in 2016, and after having months of experience in a new role/new company, I have been able to form a thorough perspective on Gainsight as a whole and the truly negative environment that exists in its workplace: -- MOST IMPORTANTLY: As a new employee, you will not be set up for success. As opposed to other companies where your manager will support you how you need it, be your internal champion, and set you up for success --> here, your manager will most likely throw you under the bus, not help you overcome your weaknesses, or have a condescending attitude towards you. They will not look out for your best interests, and that will become clear to you. Therefore, your work will suffer, your growth will suffer, and you will find yourself in an extremely negative environment. -- Managers (specifically mid-level ones) want your life to be as difficult as possible. There is no care or concern for your personal life or life outside work, but there is a care to make sure you stay under them and don't proceed up the company ladder. Your hours, your ability to success and grow, and your personal life will suffer. -- There is a facade of helpfulness and collaboration. Having this attributes is what the company might like to think, but after experiencing other work environments, one can quickly realize that at Gainsight, everyone has their own agenda, and they only care about themselves. There is no genuine desire to collaborate or help, only to do so if it benefits that person. This creates an extremely negative environment that lacks true innovation and creativity. -- You will be extremely micro-managed. You will not be able to have a remotely autonomous experience or be able to push initiatives on your own. If you don't fall perfectly in line with those around you and above you, you will be ostracized. -- You will be unhappy. No one at this company is happy and it's because of the negative culture that has been set by mid & mid-to-high level managers. Don't get me wrong - there are a ton of extremely talented people at this company. It's beyond me as to why they've stayed as long as they have, but I'm confident that won't continue unless things change.

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Gainsight Response
9y
Thank you for taking the time to write this. It's clear from the thoughtfulness that you put into this that you care about your former teammates and want things to be better. That being said, I'm so sorry for the pain I've caused you in your time here. I own this personally as CEO and it's my fault that you had a bad experience. I probably will never be able to repay that to you (though feel free to reach out to me if I can) but hopefully I can pay it forward with other teammates. I truly am sorry. This post brought me great sadness. Our process when we receive Glassdoor input (good or bad) is to post it online internally to spur more input/dialog. I received several posts in our public forum internally (Chatter) and several more submissions through our anonymous feedback system. I won't go into the specifics here though I'm glad to, but please know your post sparked good dialog and you should be proud for trying to make your former company better. I wish you the best in your future endeavors. Again, I truly am sorry.
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Glassdoor has 748 Gainsight reviews submitted anonymously by Gainsight employees. Read employee reviews and ratings on Glassdoor to decide if Gainsight is right for you.