15 Aug 2022
MarketMuse Response
3yIt's unfortunate that many Glassdoor reviews are written immediately after an employee either leaves a company, or is terminated. I understand the emotions that are at play after such an an impactful event, and my typical practice here is to not respond to every review. I believe that people are entitled to their opinions about everything, including our company, regardless of whether I agree with those opinions, or not. However, I have an issue with a few of the comments made here, either because they are based on inaccurate assumptions, or because they misrepresent the record.
The OKR creation process that this former associate referred to took place over a month or so, starting just after the Thanksgiving holiday in late November, 2021, and wrapping up in late December. We received external guidance as to how to build out effective OKR's, and then built out our company wide OKR's. Once those were complete, we then created the OKR's for each department. We luanched the OKR's during the first week of January. This process ran in parallel to our fundraising effort, as we were working to secure our Series B raise. We anticipated that our fundraise effort would be successful. Unfortunately, it was not, and when it became clear in mid-January that we would not be able to immediately raise capital, I recommended to our Board on January 19 that we cut expenses to get to profitability. That recommendation was accepted, and we worked to make the needed reductions in our operating expenses. We exhausted our efforts to do so while minimizing the impact on our associates. Part of that effort was a 20% pay cut in leadership team salaries. The resulting reduction in our workforce was unfortunate and painful for all involved. We never would have gone through the OKR exercise while knowing the layoffs were coming for the sake of appearance. We re-worked the OKR's to reflect our new budget constraints, and re-launched them later in the year.
We have a consistent record over the years of our top performers achieving their goals, surpassing their OTE's, and over-performing. Due to the economic impact of the pandemic on our company's performance, we did not have any of our performers achieve their OTE's in either 2020 or 2021. During these two years, we have pro-actively made adjustments, via a Bonus, to our top performing Account Executives and Account Managers. In these cases, we felt that the associate's failure to make their plan was due to our selling environment, and was not a reflection of the skill level or work ethic of the associate. We realize that is it critical for any company, but especially for one our size, to retain our most valued associates. We have taken steps, when appropriate, to adjust compensation for those associates, so that they understand that they are valued, and we will continue to do so.
As for the rest of the comments, I will share this: I believe that MarketMuse is a special place. We're building a culture that reflects, above all else, our respect for our associates, our clients, and our partners, and focuses on doing "the right thing, the right way" in every interaction we have, both internal and external. We are not perfect. Far from it. However, we are committed to daily improvement in the experience that we provide our clients, and the work environment that we provide our associates. We have experienced challenging times over the past two years, and those challenges have placed stress, not only our business, but on our associates. We ask a lot of ourselves, and each other, and I appreciate the level of effort and commitment that our associates demonstrate every day.