Vantaggi
The company does have a great product. The founders have taken their 20+ years of experience and built a support tool that is significantly better than zendesk or salesforce. FB is acquiring it for a reason. FB has stellar engineers and it’s a testament to the founders that FB realized this was a difficult thing to create and decided to acquire it rather than build it themselves. That said, great products don’t make great companies, and despite a phenomenal investor base, it’s important to consider whether this is the right place to grow your career. The pros are that 1) the company will have a successful exit even though the FB acquisition hangs in the wings — that counts for something; 2) there's no 1-year cliff; 3) it’s not a stressful environment as management is focused on getting the company through to closing rather than building for long-term success; 4) even though the company runs like a series B company, pay and benefits are commensurate with a later stage startup; 5) company is good for the resume given it is now a unicorn; 6) some of the executives are incredibly talented and individually they are all really nice people to interact with.
Svantaggi
In the end, the issue with Kustomer is its culture, and I’m not optimistic it will change. The best way to describe it is Snow White’s perilous apple — nice and shiny on the outside but rotten at its core. I share this not out of any bitterness, but because making a decision to join a company comes with many intangible costs so a few things to keep in mind: 1) Kustomer is not a meritocracy — advancement within the company is based on those that drink the kool-aid (wear the infrequently distributed swag, post gifs in the team slack channel, sing karaoke, express enthusiasm for Brad or as others call it “manage up”). I’ve seen perfectly good people passed over promotion because they annoyed the CEO or made a mistake earlier in their time at Kustomer and are accountable for it years later. 2) Feedback is not a gift at Kustomer— the company runs two biannual review cycles. The CEO does not write performance reviews for his directs nor does he deliver reviews — this was used as justification for why other managers don’t take them seriously. 3) The CEO micromanages — literally every decision down to the text on the website passes through the CEO, which has led to an environment that is every person for himself with a lot of finger pointing. 4) Not kustomer obsessed but kash obsessed — Invest in marketing, research, hiring more recruiters so we can properly staff teams? if it costs more than $5K, it’s dead on arrival. The biggest disappointment since starting was not being able to meet my colleagues — a planned offsite for the company was cancelled because it would cost too much money. 5) Recruiting is a disaster — “A players” that want to join a rocket ship with the potential for hyper career growth would rather join a company not in limbo; those that want to join FB are joining FB directly; that leaves us with everyone in the middle and hiring is impossible. Because of this, no one performance manages their team. Unfortunately, no one seems to be held accountable for this travesty but the company is really struggling to recruit top talent.
