A nepotism baby’s paradise, a hard-worker’s hell - Sales Drata Employee Review

My time at Drata has been a dream turned nightmare, thanks to upper management's absurd demands disguised as encouragement for us to sacrifice sleep, meals, and breaks in the name of MORE. The leaders push unrealistic expectations, essentially promoting a culture that values burning out employees over fostering any semblance of work-life balance. Reps are practically ordered to neglect their personal lives, as if we're expected to be robots. “Work 16 hours a day or check yourself” as so beautifully said by the CRO, Adam Aarons, in the latest All Hands meeting. This trickles down to managers who have set the notion that work comes before all else. Adding insult to injury is the complete lack of accountability for managers. They can consistently miss quotas without facing any consequences, as long as they maintain a high-school cheerleader personality over Slack and never dare speak out, voice their opinions, or disagree with the directors. If you keep your mouth shut and chug the Drata kool-aid, you’ll do great here. But once you switch to water and the kool-aid runs out, you’ll quickly come to terms with the harsh reality of the comedy show masked as a unicorn SaaS company you’re a part of. Drata claims to the built on trust? Unlike the manager’s apparent immunity from repercussions, the only thing reps can trust is the insecurity of their job. No matter your performance, if you hit a slight rough patch, you're practically guaranteed to be nudged towards leaving with severance, saving management the hassle of putting you through a PIP. Ironically, a team that once prided themselves on being a part of this once amazing company now spend their time helping one-another find new roles and placing bets on who’s getting axed next. For a company with a core value of diversity, Drata is more like "Frata" – a fraternity of wealthy white men dominating not only 100% of leadership, but the entirety of the sales org; with diversity sadly reduced to token hires that are certainly looked down at in comparison to their white counterparts. Learning and enablement opportunities are non-existent; you'll only learn from your team members because management not only couldn't care less about your growth, but don’t have the skill-set themselves to actually help. At the end of the day, the managers are seemingly only there to kiss their bosses butts and tell their teams to “GET THAT BREAD” or “JUST DO IT!” Promotions at Drata are a joke, akin to chasing a carrot on a stick, with ever-shifting goal posts and rampant favoritism. Unless you're “their guy”, related to a higher-up, or have a history with Okta, forget about advancing. The promotion process feels like an exclusive club, where directors play favorites, leaving the rest in the dark. This had led to countless top performers being given no option but to leave because their careers were being tremendously held back the longer they remained a Drata employee. The sales director's inability to handle feedback is the rotten cherry on top of this dysfunctional cake, creating an environment devoid of constructive communication. Drata might boast higher-than-average salaries, but brace yourself for a toxic culture that prioritizes nepotism, favoritism, and being severely overworked rather than any sort of fairness or the core values they claim to uphold. Oh and the product isn’t even all that great. It’s no better or different than the competitors. It’s just three times the cost to compensate for the enormous churn issue being faced.