Birst Reviews

Cons

With the acquisition, many good people transitioned elsewhere
Somewhat spaghetti codebase (growing pains)

Cons

My team:
-extreme micro management
-terrible hours- most SDRs work 12 hour days and some brag about working weekends
-poor culture: cold, aggressive
-extremely difficult to hit quota. They were dishonest about this during the interview process
-very poor promotion path. It is almost impossible to get promoted from an SDR to an AE. AEs here are in their 30s-50s, much more tenured, and hired from outside of the company 95% of the time

Company as a whole:
-essentially zero company perks. No commuter benefits, no gym reimbursement, no catered meals. SDR team got 1 lunch once a week. Perks may seem frivolous, but it really has an impact on the happiness of your employees. Investing in your people is essential, or they will leave
-poor sense of community. Birst is very fragmented by their teams. I believe a big part of this is due to the fact that this is not a young company. The only young people here are on the SDR team. If you're looking for a young, fun startup to work at, this is not the place.

Cons

- 1:3 manager to SDR ratio
- stressful work environment
- 10% hit quota
- extreme micromanagement
- working 12 hour days, it's so stressful, you feel like you're working inside and outside of work to get to 80% of quota

Cons

No retirement benefits plans such as 401K

Cons

Management is terrible. I've never seen anything like this. Everyone on my team was depressed and looking for other jobs. The managers would make us cry with mean and rude comments. I would get anxious before every one-on-one. Additionally the C-suite is impersonal and not transparent. Even within my team there were all these secret meetings I wasn't a part of. Most stressful time in my life was working at Birst.

Cons

-There are none that i can think of

Cons

1) Terrible work environment - get used to being yelled at like you are always 5 TDs behind.
2) Lots of meetings, not much development.
3) Unrealistic quota goals - you feel like the ax is going to fall on you all the time.
4) Ridiculous work hours - you are given credit for working nights, weekends
5) ZERO growth path - see other posts, it's 100% true.

Cons

- Management needs a lot of work. Management to SDR ratio is crazy. We had 5 managers: Director of SDR team, SDR manager, and 3 territory managers (each managing 2-4 people). Territory managers are young and inexperienced. We only had 9 SDR's. Ended up creating a huge sense of hierarchy in a tiny team. Not to mention feeling micro-managed.
-Tons of unnecessary meeting
- ZERO Growth path. In the 11 years the company has been around, there have only been 2 SDRs to become AE's. If i were to guess, there have probably been 60 SDR's in that time period.

Cons

We are a startup, so are often understaffed— you can be working cross-departmentally on something new and not entirely thought thru at times. But I find this to be an exciting part of the job and usually a great opportunity. Structure is evolving slowly but surely as we build our team and process.

Emphasis seems to be mostly on product dev and sales relationships at the moment. Would be great to see more emphasis on Marketing and Brand Differentiation when the time is right.

Cons

Market is constantly changing and leapfrogging competitors.