TOXIC CULTURE
I had so many interviews. They asked all the same questions. The process dragged on for many weeks. Bizarrely, most of my interviewers had left the company soon after I joined. The official story was they resigned, but this was not true.
In my first month, I was bewildered by things that were happening inside the business. Meetings and events that should never have been planned took place. Meetings and interviews that were needed were cancelled, sometimes with no notice at all. I asked "how can this be"? The answer, from across many people, including senior executives, was "this married Executive is having an affair with this person". Senior executives laughed about it. And then subtle warnings of "do not get involved".
When I turned to HR for help, I found to my shock that they were right in the middle of it.
I watched in disgust as good people were fired (official story: resigned) and the "affair girls" were promoted to yet another level beyond their limit of competence.
I was told that the affairs were happening at C level and VP levels.
Anaplan talks about being disruptive. Unfortunately, this has all gone wrong as people at all levels take this to mean "go assassinate people above you or around you to boost your career opportunities". Very toxic, rampant and widespread. I sat near another team in Maidenhead. They openly and loudly joked about how they assassinated their leader and fooled HR leadership over this.
MEDIOCRE PRODUCT
I had looked at the product demos online before joining and felt optimistic. After joining, I found the reality quite different.
It is a cloud-based spreadsheet. That is it.
Internally, people said things like "just use a spreadsheet" and "it is full of bugs" and "ignore all those numbers, we can't work around those bugs".
They are trying to overcome some of these product issues, but I am certain they do not have the management, leadership or resources to do it.
In my view:
The product concept is flawed.
Even if they somehow get the bugs and errors resolved - which I doubt, it will still be a product that misses what the market needs.
We used it internally for lots of things and it caused major problems.
There are better and much cheaper alternatives in the market.
Spreadsheets can be much more reliable and better.
There are dozens of newer products from other software companies worth considering.
GRAVEYARD FOR SALES
There are a handful (very few worldwide) of Account Executives who are held up as the "stars" in sales. They talk at company events. This small number of salespeople achieve success by being very, very, very close to C-level decision makers at clients. They have already built these relationships during their career. They have a security pass to get into the client building and their own desk. They socialize closely with the decision makers. Due to these relationships, they could sell any software product to those clients. My observation: the sales culture is built around this.
But once the sale is made and the client implements, are the CFO and others happy with the product?
The vast majority of Account Executives join us after successful careers at other software companies such as SAP, Oracle etc, and then have the worst time of their careers and massively under-achieve.
I am told that the recruiting function even focuses on this in interviews. Questions include: Which C level decision makers are you already close to? Name the companies and the executives? How strong are those relationships?
