- There’s a saying: “France is heaven inhabited by people who think they live in hell”. That’s what I think of when reading some of these negative reviews, lol.
- That being said , there is definitely room for improvement. The product team is great , but the Sales Org has been led at multiple levels by inexperienced people / poor external hires who brought in “their people” ( yes , this is true, and it didnt go well. But Dataiku leadership stepped in and let go of the bad hires). Maybe a learned lesson is that it’s okay to hire/promote the wrong people - lets just address it quickly . (This is a downside of the kind culture - people are given too much of a chance at times…)
- Another example of this kind culture / everyone gets a chance: , some leaders in Sales (including SE, CSM, FE, etc) are promoted from within or hired in a role - but don’t have experience scaling and org , or helping a department mature from Start-Up to an established company. Some leaders lack experience and maturity to put in place the right foundation and practices / standards / accountability (**accountability - a big challenge at Dataiku ** ) to execute as efficiently as we could. I haven’t had the toxic leadership experience others have mentionned, but i’m sure there a balance to be found between being a push-over and being a bad/difficult manager.
- Historically - too product led as a company vs sales led. This means a lack of appreciation of what makes sales / the company successful. For example, a lot of Sales decisions have been made by non sales people. Sales updates get rolled out by non sales people. (That doesn’t mean they are all bad , but that means adoption / change management / roll out is often poorly managed - and it shows an under appreciation for sales as a differentiating function. )
- Our process is actually decent; but lack of accountability (in other sales functions - ex: SE) means no standardization or follow up from managers to ensure process is followed.. (unless you’re an AE - then they want the process followed and check up).
- Managers/Leaders need to double down and further work with their teams to ensure understanding and adoption of what’s being communicated - especially given how many chances we give people. If you’re hiring greener people, you can’t
rely only on the other departments for enablement and self-learning. ( I’m not saying to cancel how we do enablement / but it doesn’t replace a Manager booking their team 60 minutes to hammer down the info / updates - which are often very critical to properly communicate in the field. )
