Sales pipelines are not nearly as strong as what was alluded to during the interview cycle. After a few months in the trenches I felt more than a wee bit Catfished. ThoughtSpot demos energize prospects, but use cases and budgets materialize a lot less easily and a lot more slowly than you might be be led to believe during the interview phase.
One cultural habit I became aware of is that some chains of management do not respect certain professional courtesies. If you are interviewing here and your LinkedIn social network intersects with ThoughtSpot managers' own networks, brace for potential backchannel network-snooping that you may not have yet authorized. You might not be able to trust that your interview cycles will stay out of the industry's gossip grapevine. Here's an example of that: An acquaintance of mine who interviewed with ThoughtSpot was chagrined when one of their *own subordinents* blurted out casually one day, "Oh, I heard through my network you were interviewing at ThoughtSpot!" It turns out that although my friend's interview cycle was in early stages, and permission to contact references/network hadn't been granted yet, ThoughtSpot management knew people in my friend's social network, and ended up tipping off my friend’s subordinate that their own manager was looking for a new job! My friend exited the interviews with a bad taste in the mouth.
What's worse, is that in roles that produce revenue or indirectly support revenue-producers, there is an unspoken culture of treating new employees' first several weeks or months on the job as nothing more than an "extended on-the-job interview." In other words, new hires who may have sacrificed great opportunities to work at ThoughtSpot (and who did so in good faith), actually join the company already skating on thin ice without even knowing how potentially dire their predicament is from the get-go. Even after having made it through their half dozen interviews, presentations, and intelligence and emotional assessment tests, you should still regard your position as far from secure. You are actually interviewing until your first year is over, and the only performance feedback you may receive during this unspoken trial period is: "Today is your last day. By the way, your medical coverage ends at the stroke of midnight."
Some chains of management here are hiring for a certain unstated archetype or mold of startup employee, and their interview process fails to vet this out. If management eventually decides you don't perfectly match some kind of idol of the ideal startup employee, you can be let go suddenly. This is an appalling way to treat professional talent, to lure or invite them in with little on-boarding support in this fast-paced environment, only to inexplicably show them the door a few months later. And such a culture leaves those left behind feeling bewildered and uncertain. Who’s next in line to get blindfolded and tied to a post?
I know of at least three or four new employees recruited from top companies or leading schools, who were summarily dismissed without warning and for vague reasons in this manner. One VP stayed only 3 months and left voluntarily. Sales engineers have been pushed out the door after barely a few months on the job. Inside sales reps have been let got after just 3 months along with their AE, as if they were a package. No warning in any case. The ones let go aren't weren't bad employees. Are they trying to create Hunger Games culture? Do not allow yourself to feel comfortable or relaxed until you've surpassed that one year hurdle and made beer drinking buddies up and down your chain of management. Solicit feedback often; management ignoring you is a signal your head is already arranged on the chopping block, the clock ticking down to the end of the month or quarter, when the axe will finally fall.
Additionally, in many cases, introductory demos to customers are achieved by gifting the prospect a $150 Amazon voucher or enticement. As you can imagine, leads that result from prize-dangling are frequently a waste of precious time and energy. Coming from a background of profitable, stable software companies, I personally found this practice slightly embarrassing and reminiscent of timeshare-salesmanship tactics. But hey, it's a startup and we're counting on all those stock options; you do what you have to jumpstart conversations. You'll be pushing some wet noodles, and may be under pressure to set them to a higher stage in Salesforce than they genuinely deserve.
What really astonished me, though, is how it took 6-8 weeks for the prospects to receive their promised gift after granting us an hour or more of their precious time. I read several angry or annoyed emails from prospects (sent to a shared email box seen by all employees) who never received their gift and kept having to ask for it to be sent. It made me cringe that we *had to pay* prospects to listen to our pitch and watch our demos; but it made me *die a little inside* every time I read we took our own sweet time in getting a prospect their promised gift—if we even sent it at all! There is something unconscious and even a little toxic about a corporate culture that makes gift offers like that, and then turns its back and fails to deliver promptly. It might seem like such a small thing, but this solitary act symbolizes something deeper about the organization's inner culture and desperation to create sales and the appearance of vitality.
Perhaps this is related to why they sometimes also churn and burn employees, because when your sales pipeline is actually flatfooted (one region achieved only 7% of quota for the quarter in 2017), there’s nothing like a game of musical chairs to help middle management appear like they’re constructively tinkering with the business and that everything is somehow, "under control, and going to be on a growth trajectory now that we let go those mediocre employees who were holding us all back."
Lastly, there is no vacation or sick time at ThoughtSpot, only an oxymoron benefit called "Unlimited Vacation." You are explicitly told to take 2-3 weeks of vacation per year—maximum of 4 weeks, "or else questions will be asked." The purpose of this policy is two-fold. First, studies show that these plans actually cause employees to take LESS vacation than under traditional accrual-based entitlement plans. This is because American workers secretly fear being perceived as lazy by their colleagues. Exploiting our cultural fear of taking time off is a one-sided financial win for ThoughtSpot. Second, if you leave or are terminated, there is no accrued vacation balance sitting on a ledger needing to be paid out. Another one-sided win for ThoughtSpot.
This is a somewhat workaholic culture, with high travel requirements for some roles, and the "unlimited paid leave" policy is a sneaky way to deprive highly qualified employees of earned leave they would be entitled to receive at leading competitors in the industry. Many of the highly qualified employees working at ThoughtSpot would be entitled to 4-6+ weeks total paid leave at industry leaders. Many ThoughtSpot roles require intermittent 6-7 day workweeks and 10-14 hour days during crunch time, and this trendy, bizarre vacation policy speaks volumes about the *true* work-life culture upper management seek to create.
There are some incredibly talented and genuinely good-hearted managers and executives here I'd recommend working for in a heartbeat. Unfortunately, there are also some odd, cliquish pockets that outwardly operate like a capricious, narcissistic Ivy League frat house cursed by a touch of social awkwardness. It's up to the candidate to read the tea leaves and trust their intuition. This company may yet become a profitable darling like Tableau, but in the meantime, it could spell a temporarily disastrous career move for an established professional who passes the interviews but doesn't fit that ethereal startup sparkle-pony mold.
