Avalara Employee Reviews about "upper management"

Pros

Growing company with lots of opportunities and having some strong core values.

Cons

Upper management at India level has no work ethic.They wont care about what you do workwise . They only care about what thier perception is about you and will only act accordingly as per their limited knowledge of you or gossiped information.They have no expertise techinal or non technical to be able to know or understand as to what you do. Monopoly and politics is what they indulge into.

Pros

Flexible work schedule and beer tap at work

Cons

Upper management has no idea and rarely listens

Pros

Not many anymore. The software is great.

Cons

Seeing new upper management come in and fire a majority of my co workers is concerning. Directors seem to care more about themselves rather than their team. Quota being increased next year after being extremely successful this year, seems like I’m being punished for overachieving. Poor benefits, culture is deteriorating. Career growth is almost non existent internally, they prefer to hire outside.

Pros

This was a good company years ago but the company culture has been drastically degrading. They offer decent healthcare and paid time off. If you're a friend, family member or a former business associate of an executive a VP or a manager then you have great job security and preferential treatment. Some of the satellite offices are filled with 80+% of these kinds of protected employees, a bit unsettling if you're not one of them. Management throws out catchy phrases like "ask for forgiveness not permission" but don't tell you that it only applies to the protected employees and that all others can be easily fired the moment they question anything or step out of line in any way. The company has decent branding of its products but competitors are starting to catch up. Marketing works very hard to constantly find and bury any negative feedback about the company and it's products. So there's a constant churn of new naive employees, some of whom can survive if they don't ask questions, don't make any suggestions and follow orders unquestionably. The company has lured quite a few investors into believing in the value and vision painted by the company so there's a decent amount of funding for the lavish parties and special "business" trips taken by management (and strategic alliance managers) with their certain strategic partners.

Cons

Don’t be misled by the ‘seemingly’ high rating of both the company and the CEO on Glassdoor. There are good companies out there that truly care about their employees. Avalara (at the time of this review) is currently not one of them. Sort the reviews by the 'Rating' and you'll see a consistent pattern. - The company does not care about the employees but misleads them into thinking that their opinions actually matter. - Heavy cronyism and protectionism of friends, family & former business associates of: executives, VPs and managers. Employees that are in this category have great job security without having to perform. - Even mid-level managers have carte blanche to fire employees without question or repercussions from upper management or HR. - The constant churn (hiring and firing) of employees causes very low morale on some teams. There's a constant ebb and flow of low morale moving across various teams at all times. - Customer experience during implementation process has been mediocre at times. - Customers have mentioned their dissatisfaction with the support and the customer service and would switch to a competitive solution if there were better options. - Unclear 'rules of engagement across teams and departments' causes turmoil and confusion regarding duties, responsibilities and (for the sales teams) who should work various leads. - Certain midlevel managers don't see the value of having the reseller channel and have voiced their vision of a completely direct sales model in the future. - Reseller channels are fed-up with the company being so aggressive and have been flocking to alternative solutions.

Pros

Free beer after hours, if you don't have a life and no one to go home to. That's about it.

Cons

Worst micro-management I've ever experienced. Which might not be SO bad if the sales managers actually knew what they were doing. Completely clueless. Their entire philosophy is 'dial more numbers', 'send more emails' and by default, you'll just magically make more money. A couple years ago, the company thought they were growing a lot faster than they really were and over hired sales reps. By a long shot. The entire sales organization has been struggling ever since. They had to let a bunch of people go, and created new (worthless) positions for other people they didn't want to can right there on the spot. But ultimately, it was a position where management hoped people would just weed themselves out. It worked. People were quitting left and right, while those that hung on (miserably) were given more and more restrictions, month after month, systematically guaranteeing their failure. Then they hold 'team meetings' where managers berate their entire team for missing quota. If anyone mentioned the restrictions and how they made it very challenging to hit quota, they would literally get screamed at and told to 'find employment elsewhere, if you don't like it'. On top of that, we were consistently given fake leads then we would get yelled at for 'not working them'. We were trying to sell sales tax calculation software, but we were expected to work leads for non-profit organizations, government entities, utility companies, and a laundry list of other businesses that had no use for our software. For the handful of leads that were actually good, the majority would say they weren't interested, then their contact information would go into a list that was called ad emailed over and over, day in and day out by two dozen desperate sales people, until they demanded we never call again, blocked our phone numbers, and registered our email domain as spam. If people asked me what I did for a living, I literally told them I was a telemarketer. Morale couldn't possibly get any lower across the entire sales team.There are a few 'superstars' there, who are force fed all the high quality, big $$ opportunities and are raking in the cash. But they are drinking buddies in the 'good ol' boy club' with upper management. If you don't spend all your 'free time' (what little is given to you) drinking and partying with upper management, then you are just given the leftover scraps that the managers BFF's couldn't close. While these few sales reps are blowing their numbers out of the water, the entire rest of the sales force was struggling to even come close to quota. Customers were constantly furious, because they were sold products they didn't want or need, but were sold them at a highly discounted rate and the only way to get the 'great deal' was to purchase multiple products as a 'bundle package'. Everything would seem great, and we'd get them into this fully automated system, then when their automatic renewal comes around, their cost for using the products would increase 200%. Customers would be irate and threaten to cancel, but it was so difficult to undo the automation, and go back to a manual process, that they were practically stuck with the product. Either pay full price, or cancel and deal with months of difficult work to undo everything and get back to the manual process and get your books back in order. I could go on and on about all the cons and negativity, but you can just scroll down through all the other reviews to see everything else that's wrong with this company. As stated many times before, the majority of the positive reviews are clearly fake.

Pros

Just like any job, if you do your job the way you should, and put effort in the way your expected then you WILL be rewarded and successful. You can't blame your failure on a ' failed real estate agent ' that manager does the best she can with what she has to deal with and very is dedicated to her role. As a matter of fact, any other manager in other departments at Avalara also try their best, next time you write a review keep in mind you're bitter because of some situation that you created ( you cheated, didn't' do your job to the minimum standards, or simply its not something you're good at). You also can't put down management when they are just following upper management orders. Do you really think they want to set you up for failure when they are paid off there employees success? Reviews aren't suppose to single out one person when they bend over backwards for their department and employees. Reviews are suppose to give feed back as a whole company not social slander and lies just because the position is not your cup of tea. I don't enjoy my job everyday, and its not the easiest, but if you do your minimum quota (which is , 70 calls in 8 hrs) which is proven achievable its actually fun and the employees are fun to be around. The pay is good for starting out and if you push yourself then the pay only gets better. The company is growing fast and change is faster. Management is very flexible if you have good work ethics ( come in on time, do what your asked, stay late if you need to... the basics for any job). There are free lunches all the time, spiffs, and contests to keep you motivated. How many jobs have you had, that want you to 'work hard play hard'? When you read other reviews on this site keep in mind some people are upset because they didn't have what it takes to work at Avalara!

Cons

1-Growing company means fast change, sometimes so fast that you don't notice the change until you make a mistake. 2- Merging different types of taxes all at once ( Sales, Use tax, Telcom, VAT, Excise) with out the training will damage the overall customer service. 3- To much telemarketing (some companies receive calls up to 10 times a month, or emailed daily) 4- Communication between departments is awful. We need more product overview meetings, and company meetings to brief each other with what's changing within the company. 5- Quota is unrealistic when Avalara over hires! To many sales representative's with not enough prospects or leads..Quality work is hard if you have to meet a quota that affects your monthly pay.

Pros

Company culture is really good.

Cons

Upper Management and the CEO don't know what they are doing. They let HR and managers get away with a lot. Watch your back, people like to put knives in it.