Hootsuite Senior Leadership FAQ

Pros

-Really great team of talented people -Learning-based role to boost career growth -Company has shifted to permanent remote options (with an office option available post-COVID)

Cons

-EXTREME lack of diversity in leadership (mostly white men). The CTO frequently talks about "diverse candidate pools" for leadership positions, but an extremely high percentage of new leaders are white men from his previous company (Sitecore) -Recently hired an SVP of sales who ran for political office on an anti-immigration platform (potentially due to a lack of DE&I checks when hiring leadership) -Lots of lipservice from the leadership team around diversity, equity, and inclusion, but no actual changes -High rate of employee turnover

Advice to Management

When employees talk about their concerns with a lack of diversity, RAISE IT WITH THE LEADERSHIP TEAM. Many times, employees have submitted complaints or concerns with management but it never makes it further than that. There are no good outlets for providing feedback to the leadership team, and often times, going to our managers is the only option.

Pros

Internal movement, Great place to learn, and all new leadership in 2020 has been great

Cons

lower than market pay sometimes

Pros

Early days Hootsuite was a high energy, fun, collaborative company where new ideas were valued and everyone could get behind a common goal. It seems most of their growing pains are behind them, and after a couple years of turmoil and high employee churn the new CEO and leadership have stabilized the ship and focused on employees and customers instead of their own ambitions.

Cons

Between 2014-2017 the company was constantly pivoting between focusing on the enterprise vs. self-serve market. It took them 3 years to decide on the Enterprise SMB niche as their sweet-spot. This was the cause of tremendous growing pains, largely attributable to the CEO's inability to make up his mind. This was reflected in the string of failed acquisitions (Brightkit, Zeetl, Adespresso, Liftmetrix) and failed expansions (Singapore, Brazil, Industry Principal team, etc.) While most of these issues seem to be in the past, there is still one lingering large issue at Hootsuite: their development team has almost no connection to customers, and is not accountable to customer success. Their product team never talked to customers. Things like customer advisory boards, customer facing roadmap feedback sessions, product ownership of showstopping critical bugs, etc. Were never implemented. As a result the product team is often building product in a vacuum, caring only about cool new projects that can further their careers rather than maintaining critical functionality customers rely on.

Advice to Management

While actions taken recently on diversity and inclusion are welcome and well overdue, don't think the growing pains are behind you.

Pros

Good culture, great leadership that knows what they're doing

Cons

AVerage salaries compared to the industry

Pros

-Really great team of talented people -Learning-based role to boost career growth -Company has shifted to permanent remote options (with an office option available post-COVID)

Cons

-EXTREME lack of diversity in leadership (mostly white men). The CTO frequently talks about "diverse candidate pools" for leadership positions, but an extremely high percentage of new leaders are white men from his previous company (Sitecore) -Recently hired an SVP of sales who ran for political office on an anti-immigration platform (potentially due to a lack of DE&I checks when hiring leadership) -Lots of lipservice from the leadership team around diversity, equity, and inclusion, but no actual changes -High rate of employee turnover

Advice to Management

When employees talk about their concerns with a lack of diversity, RAISE IT WITH THE LEADERSHIP TEAM. Many times, employees have submitted complaints or concerns with management but it never makes it further than that. There are no good outlets for providing feedback to the leadership team, and often times, going to our managers is the only option.