A story of a dying unicorn - Anonymous employee Productboard Employee Review

1.0
Apr 27, 2026
Anonymous employee
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

Great people on frontline positions as you can read in almost every review. Good tech stack and interesting challenges. Company lunches and great offices with skilled and practical facility managers. You'll meet a lot of people, not for long, but the connections are trully valuable.

Cons

Frankly, the company has ran out of steam and only innertia is moving things... forward? Pre-covid, the future looked bright: Strong market positon, VC money was flowing in, people and leadership were skilled "enough". Then the hyper growth phase came, which was to say it extremely lighty very mishandled: Too much freedom in the tech stack lead to quickly diverging technologies, unclear domain ownership lead to confusion, conflicts, and forgotten places nobody wanted to touch, upper and middle management slowly were losing their grip on reality and fallen into trap of over-processed output reporting and deadend discussions. Here we could see the first bad actors joining, like execs with spotlight addiction and questionable spending habbits, hi Steven. The things started to visibly crumble with the first post-covid market contraction at the beginning of russian invasion. The ARR stagnated, individual people started to lose their sanity and later their job, delivery started to slow down and a major rework of product, which took more than 3 years with questionable results, has just started. It was clear the company was too big for management to handle and VCs started to question the viability of their investment. Then the first ever layoffs came and with them the endless re-orgs, re-focusing and revolving doors in upper management. This trend continues even now and likely won't end anytime soon. Over the year of reorgs, the CEO became very hands on, losing trust in the rest of execs and middle management. and started questioning every decision further isolating himself in his SF tower and echo chamber. With every exec's departure the messiah complex has started to spread: The next person coming will save us, trust us! Unfortunately, it was mainly the CEO picking them up and his picks were less than viable, focusing mainly on logos on resume than their actual skill and company fit. With every new exec a reog soon followed adding to chaos. Over the years the quality of these new hires became even worse, however counterintuitively their power, or rather their audacity grew and leading to break up of productive and caring company culture and promotion of indivudualism, focus on optics, and straight up manipulation and lies, hi Omer. As they say, the fish stinks from the head, and nowhere is it clearer than in Productboard. The CEO is trapped in endless hype-refocus-frustration cycle. Whenever anything gained traction resources were quickly refocused somewhere with a better marketing, leaving teams distracted and product in an eternal state of migration. The prime example was his over-excited Apple Vision Pro All-hands where he lead the whole meeting with the head set on, telling us this is the future. It was like observing a child on christmas with the gift he demanded from the parents because the advertisment was simply too good. A pure concentrated cringe. It became a tradition, every new exec said they will be the one who will rein in Hubert, the CEO, and guess what, once the honeymoon was over they were gone acheiving almost nothing except leaving him more convinced, he is the only one who can lead the company. It doesn't help he has a tendency to take every voluntary departure personaly as lack of loyalty, and every layoff as a marketing stunt. Seeing his mother praising him on a LinkedIn post about recent layoffs was trully, trully bizzare. Zooming out, the story is simple: the rest of the market has caught up, the product has never outgrew the risk of being replaced by excel sheet and product management is no longer a hot topic, meanwhile reorgs broke the people and those endless pivots have never gain enough traction nor have found a market fit. It is very telling that the company which is selling a product management software based of customer feedback has forgoten to do proper product management and stopped listening to customers. P.S.: It's super ironic to see LinkedIn post celebrating women in Productboard while knowing most of them has been laid off few weeks after.

Explore other reviews about Productboard

5.0
Apr 17, 2025
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

Working for Productboard is a dream come true. Though I didn't know what we did before joining, our Product, People, and Customers are delightful at every turn. There are also great benefits like an in-person company kick-off, performance-based bonuses, healthcare, and more. I get to work remotely, but this isn't common in our hiring for current roles with the majority being hybrid.

Cons

Productboard is a startup so that means the future of the Product can change in a moment. This can be frustrating for customers and is something to settle in to and try your best to attend to their needs. Our leadership is supportive and doesn't make lofty assumptions on what's possible.

2
2.0
Apr 30, 2026
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

Strong, thoughtful colleagues across the organization A shared drive to succeed and push the business forward Competitive perks and overall employee experience Meaningful investment in helping employees build AI fluency relevant to their roles

Cons

Increasingly challenging leadership dynamics at the executive level A noticeable rise in internal politics Lack of gender diversity within the executive team The company recently went through a reduction in force. While workforce changes are not uncommon, especially in companies navigating transformation, the execution left many of us with deep concerns. The new CFO, in particular, has raised some real concerns around trust and leadership style. At the company kick-off in February, he openly joked that people would probably see him as the *hole, and that even though he might make people’s lives difficult, they’d still end up liking him. This joke landed poorly and felt more like a signal than something to smile about. Since then, the environment has started to feel increasingly political. There’s a sense that you either stay in the CFO's good graces or risk becoming a target. That dynamic has been called out openly, which makes it even more uncomfortable. Whether intentional or not, that perception has had an impact on morale. Overall, it’s created a culture that feels less about collaboration and more about navigating personalities and political power plays.

15
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