Medallia Employee Reviews about "career path"

Pros

- Friendly, smart, humble colleagues and an atmosphere that fosters friendships among employees - Lots of perks (free food, Caltrain passes, happy hours every week) - Accessibility of leadership (Weekly fireside chats/Q&A with leadership) - Emphasis on continuous learning (training, lunch & learns, book clubs, etc)

Cons

- Growing pains: company is expanding at such a rapid rate that those who are unable to adapt quickly or lack "scrappiness" may struggle - Many departments are still figuring out defined career paths for employees. There is a "Career Path" initiative in progress, but we still have a ways to go.

Pros

Fantastic place to work. Expensive product, disruptive market

Cons

Payment reflects the high supply for the job. Limited career path currently

Pros

Pros: gym, catered lunches, beer, happy hour, caltrain pass, lending library, random decorations around the office, lots of parking if you need it?

Cons

My review echoes many of the reviews already posted. The takeaway is that the problems at Medallia are very real and aren't isolated to a handful of people. I like a lot of my colleagues but I regret joining Medallia in retrospect. My professional development has been stifled by the repetitive nature of the work and I've had a lot of trouble finding a mentor here since there are very few people here who know what it means to be a mentor and mentorship isn't prioritized here. I'm in Implementations and have seen things continue to decline since I started here. Things haven't been getting better. They just keep getting worse. I don't enjoy the work I do and I'm badly overworked. The work is repetitive, unsatisfying, and almost always thankless. Many of us feel like we're being taken advantage of. We regularly do work that's beyond the scope of our roles because that's what's expected of us, and this is fine. But once we ask for compensation or a title that matches the work we're doing we're met with a response I can only describe as "how dare you," and this is not fine. I get that this is a company where we need to roll up our sleeves and do what's needed but at least recognize the effort and change in scope via comp and title instead of taking advantage of us so much and for so long. This is killing morale. The product is also really unreliable and breaks down on you in the most random ways with way too much regularity. It's hard to know if it's doing what it should be doing at any given moment. Another reviewer commented that you don't pick up any technical skills that translate outside of Medallia and I agree with that. There's no career path and I don't see any reason for me to keep pushing myself to deliver high quality work when I know that won't lead to a promotion. Promotions here are more politically driven than merit based and I'm unlucky enough to have a manager who isn't concerned with the career path of any of his direct reports. My colleagues and I have tried talking to my manager, our skip level, and HRBPs and all we get are delay tactics and more talking with no resolution. Even if the resolution isn't in my favor I'd rather have that then have these conversations go on endlessly and fizzle out. I'm at a point where I feel like I have nowhere to go if I need help and I don't believe anyone in leadership has what it takes to actually help those of us under them. I know I'm not alone in feeling this way. My manager was recently promoted and he definitely didn't deserve it because of merit or because he's a good people manager. In fact most of us on his team want to get out from under him but are concerned about him retaliating in the unlikely event that we're up for promotion. Since our current head of Implementations came on board, my manager has spent every waking moment at his boss's side, campaigning for himself while showing zero concern or empathy for his own direct reports and to treat us like we're bothering him when we need help. I've considered switching to another team in Implementations but the sad truth I've learned from talking to my colleagues across Implementations is there really are only a handful of people managers here who know how to manage people. I agree with other reviewers who say that the tone of Implementations and Medallia in general now revolves around finger pointing, pettiness, unprofessionalism, self promotion, and attention seeking behaviors and that's very clearly lived out by our people managers and I think it originates from the top of Implementations because things weren't like this before. We struggled with the quality of people management before but not on this scale. I don't have much hope for Medallia actually fixing these issues or making any real improvements and after seeing things consistently decline since starting here, I'm now looking to leave. There's a lot of potential for Medallia to be a great place to work but we really need leadership to step up their game and allow themselves to get uncomfortable to make this happen. What's really annoying is to keep hearing the same "we're aware that there are some leadership or people management issues and we're working to improve things." But what credence can we give this when we have bad leaders trying to figure out how to deal with or fix other bad leaders? It's the blind leading the blind. We're hearing alot of "we're investing in leadership" but when are we going to realize that not all leaders can be developed into effective leaders and may need to go? On top of hearing the usual "we're working to improve things" we also hear alot of "we're experiencing growing pains that come with rapid growth" and I'm tired of leadership hiding behind these excuses and not actually effecting any change. If you keep saying you're working on something is that an excuse to not provide a solution? I've been hearing these lines since day one and they're tired and overused cop outs. We keep hearing "we're working on it" or "we're going to implement something to fix this," but like I said things haven't gotten better and have gotten worse over time and we haven't seen any real solutions. An example of this is the text analytics team. It's well known throughout Professional Services that they have severe leadership issues. How many more people on that team need to quit before Medallia opens it eyes and does something? We've lost so many members from that team already. Do we count on a cycle of unhappy employees leaving and then replacing them with new hires and rinse and repeat, absolving us from having to address the underlying issues? Trusting leadership is another issue. Many of us feel that they are constantly trying to pull one over on us. Their actions with the switch to open vacation and with the initial rollout of the recent employee survey send a concerning message. The ethics are questionable and these actions demonstrate more self preservation than actually having the best interest of Medallia employees at heart. The vacation and employee survey issues were corrected because of the mass backlash leadership received for it. That leadership even tries to pull these unethical stunts with us in the first place doesn't send a comforting message. We're just waiting to see what stunt they'll try to pull next. I don't expect anything to come of this review except for it to be followed by a suspicioulsly generic but positive review stating that the product is great and the quality of leadership is either great or improving with no real or meaningful criticism other than something general about growing pains. Yet another example of how Medallia's leadership is more concerned about giving the illusion that things are great but not actually doing anything to really make things great, which is a great message to send for a company that allegedly focuses on feedback btw. Again ethics ftw and a huge failure for living out the company mission. If only leadership would really pay attention to what's going on and do something about it, then maybe they wouldn't see so many complaints they have to superficially control for on the outside.

Pros

-BENEFITS: average -PTO: company has moved to an open vacation plan -COLLEAGUES: you'll be in good company with folks at the analyst, sr. analyst, and manager level -PERKS: Some decent perks (CalTrain pass), but they've been getting stripped away over time

Cons

-DECISION-MAKING: General lack of common sense in the decision-making process and a lot of obvious things are missed. Leadership spends an embarrassing amount of time deliberating no brainers and remaining indecisive on those. When it comes to the decisions that need to be carefully thought out, leadership makes a quick rash decision and almost always swings in the wrong direction on these, causing everyone on the front line to work like crazy to clean up the mess they've made and try to recover. There are also a lot of decisions that are communicated without any details on how to execute or even any thought behind whether it's something that can be executed. -PRODUCT: Shaky at best. This is not a big data company and the product is not equipped to handle big data. General process is to over-service clients to make up for severe product limitations and gaps. New products and features are seemingly rolled out with little to any thought behind them in terms of integration with the rest of the platform or QA. Leadership doesn't seem to notice that these glaring issues exist until we've invested countless hours and resources in developing some half-baked idea, crippling the development of the rest of the product due to lack of resources. That leadership doesn't recognize these are half-baked ideas at the time of conception is another issue... -LEADERSHIP: They lack the skills, consistency, and conviction in their decisions to be effective and respected. They inspire no confidence in their abilities with the constant changes in direction that occur what feels like every 20 minutes. There are also multiple people managers who are clearly not fit to to be people managers and they are driving good people away. My leader was inconsistent, lacked basic leadership and people management skills and qualifications, and had no business running a team - effectively running the team into ruin. -PROFESSIONAL SERVICES: Stay away. The work is repetitive and unsatisfying and the technical skills you learn in pro services do not translate anywhere outside of Medallia. Career path is a joke. Leadership issues and politics run rampant. -ROOT CAUSE ANALYSIS: Company largely doesn't address the root cause when issues come up. The approach to issues is to patch them up and go and enter a state of constant inefficient maintenance. But this only applies when the company isn't busy burying its head in the sand. -FIRE-FIGHTING: Get used to it. You won't be working towards anything big and impactful because every day will be filled with putting out fires. Everything...is...always...on...fire...it's exhausting. -CULTURE: Despite what the company touts, this is not a company that's open to hearing the opinions of its employees. If you make the mistake of offering any sort of constructive criticism, be prepared because it's not welcome here. This is a company that pretends to be something it's not. It's not until you're on the inside that you realize just how bad it is. -COMPENSATION: Expect to be low-balled. Many claims that comp is performance based, but the company seems to level everyone's comp. -CAREER PATH: This should have been figured out by the time Medallia had 100 or before they hit 200 employees. Medallia has hit 1000 employees and this is still an open item. If the company is trying to send the message that HR and leadership don't care about career path and that employees shouldn't expect clearly articulated career path options, then message received. (They'll say that they care about it to save face but they don't actually execute.) -PROMOTIONS AND ROLES: Highly political. Unless you're willing to snuggle up to leadership, know that good, hard work will get you nowhere. General misalignment in what you're hired to do and what you end up doing. Expect to do the job 1-2 levels above your role for 1-2 years before you get promoted to the role you've already been doing (don't bother to think about the lost wages for you in the process). Why buy the cow if you can get the milk for free, right? -GROWTH AND DEVELOPMENT: Lots of talk about growth mindset, but it's all talk. If you're in Professional Services, once you learn the product (which takes 6-9 months at best), expect very little growth from then on. The work becomes highly repetitive and unsatisfying from then on. And when you're promoted, your role doesn't really change. You still do the same work as your prior role - you just do more of it. It's not uncommon to find managers doing analyst level work. -PEOPLE AND CULTURE (HR TEAM): The HR reps don't know what they're doing and have no idea how to solve tough problems. This may be due to there being very few people on that team with formal HR experience and qualifications, making them largely ineffective. The team prefers to pretend everything is fine rather than to address what's going on, even when serious violations and fire-able offenses are reported to them. Seriously, do your job or continue to watch the company crumble. -RECRUITING: They have a tendency to make false promises during the recruiting process. They'll bring you in for a Sr. Analyst or a Sr. Manager role and then tell you you'll be coming in one level lower as an Analyst or Manager instead, "but don't worry because you'll be fast-tracked to promotion to the role you interviewed for within 6 months." This is all lies. Recruiting has made these false promises to many people throughout the organization, and the bait and switch needs to stop. -DOOMED TO REPEAT HISTORY: The company doesn't seem to learn from past mistakes and constantly repeats history. How many times has the ill-fated Customer Success team been created and re-created? (Pro tip: never join a newly created team. The running joke is that it will be dissolved within 6 months.) -WORK-LIFE BALANCE: Severely lacking -SCALE: Teams need to be able to scale what they're doing. There are clear issues with some leaders hoarding all the work within their teams, causing those teams to become unduly stressed with their workload. This is all because the leader wants to do what's good for himself/herself to stay relevant, despite this being something that's clearly bad for the company and not sustainable for the team members expected to deliver all the work.

Pros

- Smart, motivated, and friendly people - Some good benefits (e.g. caltrain pass, 2 catered lunches) - No major competitors in the CEM space - Company continues to grow and will likely IPO soon

Cons

- Too much focus on people & culture and "growth mindset" - Poor work-life balance, especially if you are commuting to work - No 401k matching - Non-transferrable job skills for solutions analysts (i.e. working in Medallia's system all day) - No clear career path for solutions managers (i.e. very difficult to get promoted to senior manager)

Pros

People are helpful, nice, and somewhat lazy for the most part. (Others are worked into the ground and seem miserable.) Even though compensation is fair at best, other benefits are great. Lots of food/drink. Good healthcare/dental/vision. Very flexible work schedules (especially for parents who want to pick up their children after work). If you want to be able to play foosball for an hour a day or go for a walk, nobody seems to mind.

Cons

Career path is not defined, and management is more focused on building out the increasingly apparent hierarchy. It seems like a lot of people are very bored with what they do on the day-to-day. Work can be mind numbing and not particularly challenging. A lot of people cruise and do not challenge themselves, but they have a great work-life balance.

Pros

Amazing company culture, great people, no egos. One week of culture training, extremely collaborative work environment. Vacation days are very flexible. High productivity without high stress; good work-life balance. Total transparency from exec board -- weekly fireside chats with the CEO & President, who are amazing & down-to-earth. Great perks (free CalTrain passes, on-site gym, catered meals, excellent health insurance, free books to take home, etc). In high growth phase so an exciting time to be working here!

Cons

As the company grows bound to pick up a few bad apples. Promotions/career path a bit unclear. Slightly below market value in terms of salary.