RainKing Employee Reviews about "manager"

Cons

They drastically change their research model every quarter trying to keep up with Discover.org. Managers are simply awful, likely resulting from being leaned on hard by upper management and not knowing how to handle the situation well... there is also a lot of two-faced behavior regarding raises and promotions, of which there is precious little opportunity. Meeting after useless and time-wasting meeting. High turn over rate from employees all over the departments being fired needlessly or leaving for greener pastures. These employees aren't always replaced as the company seeks to save money and squeeze more out of the employees that remain. There is a lot of unprofessionalism in the office and a lot of obsession over Discover.org. I do not know of one employee there that isn't frantically searching for work elsewhere.

Cons

Bonus structure and goals are stretch goals, in particular for research analysts where this has changed recently. Not bad in and of itself, but this does cause a stress point for some analysts. This system may just be setting off a wave of mass-firings in future months should some analysts not reach their targets over the next several months but for now, everyone appears safe. Also, like the post below, there are some perceptions that employee promotions have not been based solely by merit and that all peer level managers including those not familiar with others work have a say on who gets promoted, and this contributes to office politics which generally is at a minimum here otherwise aside from lateral moves to other departments. In short, if a person isn't promoted or given an upward trajectory move to another department, then this job could end up being a dead end position. If this becomes the case for a particular person after a certain number of years, he or she should start looking for a new job because either that employee will never be promoted even if the analyst is a good performer because management doesn't care whether that employee stays or leaves, or perhaps that employee is just doing enough to avoid probation.

Cons

The first thing I will say and has been mentioned before, the training is quite underdeveloped and underwhelming. The task of a researcher is something that is equally nuanced and individual, but also needs a solid base to move forward with. There was little base in the beginning and early on, I was doing quite poorly. So, what happens? You get put on an 'improvement plan' where you work is tracked and if you don't reach the goals, you're let go. While I will take responbility for my early performance, I feel like the training and culture wasn't open enough to really ask questions and get work accomplished. That, followed by managers which are micromanaging makes work more diffiult and makes the environment feel more hostile. Also, working and trying to connect with the outsourced work was a lot more trouble then it needed to be. There was a major communications barrier but it took years before there was real change. The changing metrics also didn't help with that. Some times they could be attainable and other times not, but the fact they weren't consistant from month to month, let alone the quarter was problematic. To add, changing the research structure from quarter to quarter, also made work very difficult. For a brief period of time, we were working as a Senior and Junior reseach position. My senior had moved and ni the beginning I was told that I was going to get a new senior. After three weeks, after asking my manager when the replacement would come in he said, 'Well, we never agreed on that.' The company will dump work on people and with it's culture it's impossible to accomplish much, unless you have the good graces to be in sales. Another example was being placed on an 'Improvement plan' while also being transfered between two jobs with different responsibilities. That first week, I was given an extreme amount of week that needed to be covered in two days. Manager, both middle and upper, could often be intorable. I had three seperate managersd three seperate managersd three seperate managers throI had three seperate managers throI had three seperate managers throughout my tenure. The first one was very poor, but left. The second one was a vast imporvement, but was given a promotion. The final manager started out fine, infact I had worked with him, but then things started turning south. Before my release, two other people were let go from his team. What is interesting is how expendable employees can be, when it might be the issue with the manager. The incentives and bonus structures were jokes and could be manipulated often. After a while, it became senseless and up to pure luck and favoritism. The CEO... I have had moments with him, but he never seemed interested in the research department. I can somewhat understand that, but it feels awful knowing that for him, we are a necessary evil to the next time he sells the company. The few times he did get engaged it was rarely for the better. Company meetings, often felt pointless because they were primarily sales focused. It didn't help hearing about the rising profits and not seeing the effects of improving our condition.

Cons

The organization is a bit siloed; as roles become increasingly specialized, additional steps should be taken to keep teams and departments working with and talking to one another.

Cons

Sales at RainKing is somewhat of a nightmare. First, let's start with the pay. As a BDR, you start off at $35,000 as your base salary, and then you are compensated for the opportunities you create with a ceiling of 20 opps in a month. Anything over that, and you aren't paid. Then, if you're promoted to CSR you get a pay bump. Oh wait, no you don't... You'll still have a base salary of $35,000, but now you have the opportunity to make commission and handle full sales cycles. You get a pay raise if you exceed your quota consistently for about 6 months in a row. 90% of the reps don't ever do that. So be prepared to be making about $16/hr. plus a little commission here and there. Don't get ready to move out of your parent's house... There's little room for advancement too - All management positions are either hired from outside of the company or they're all filled. I had never heard of a great commercial rep being moved to a sales manager. It's not something they do. Either you become a top-producing rep at a dead-end career, or be poor. Also, sales reps have so much responsibility at RainKing, that it's almost impossible to hit all of your numbers. Reps are responsible for: Hunting (cold-calling and prospecting), handling inbounds (if you get any), conducting demos, cleaning salesforce, on-boarding new clients (a training/kick-off call), client success (account management), renewals, upgrades, and everything else under the sun. You'll be working 8:30 am - 5:30 pm, however if you leave at 5:30 pm, you'll be demonized for it and be considered lazy. So, you'll either have a life and be hated for it, or work like a slave and be loved for it. Management loves worker bees that sacrifice their lives for RainKing. If you love giving up all other activities in your life to work paycheck to paycheck for a below average wage, RainKing is the place for you. Required metrics include 50 calls, 40 emails, and 2 hours of talk time per day. Commercial Sales Reps quotas are $32,000 PER MONTH. If you're doing Commercial Sales at RainKing, be prepared to try and sell a nice-to-have solution that's way over-priced to companies that don't have any money. Good luck hitting any of your metrics though without inflating them with dial-and-hangup fake phone calls and mail merging. Especially if you have a couple demos on a particular day. Demo prep takes about an hour and the demo itself takes at least an hour. Factor in lunch, and there's no way you're hitting 50 phone calls. And if you do, they were meaningless non-conversations or no answers, so your talk time is going to be really low for your prospecting calls. Of course you get the talk time from the two demos though. I brought up the fact that reps handle too much to management - there's not enough time in the day to perform all required tasks, and they said that I should be bringing my computer home and getting ready for the next day. LOL right... let me dedicate my free time to RainKing too. You'd have to pay me a salary of AT LEAST $100,000 a year to get that kind of work out of me. Absolutely insane. Many other things get in the way of hitting your metrics too: - Account management: Clients constantly bothering you with trivial monotonous questions and tasks. - Renewals: Spend time trying to convince people to renew. - Meaningless meetings: Constant meetings interrupt your day and most of them are a waste of time. - Crappy accounts: Commercial sales reps are constantly trying to rip-off companies that have no money by trying to convince them to buy this unnecessary solution. Because of this, you will find that most accounts you're pursuing are a huge waste of time. - Pipeline reviews: You'll have one every week with your manager, and your pipeline will never look good enough. Even if you're truly doing everything you can to get a deal in, they'll look down on you as if you have no idea what you're doing and pick your deals apart. This is good and bad - for people that really aren't doing the right things, this is a good way to learn. For those that know exactly how to sell (in my case) this is just annoying. Don't try and tell me that I could be doing more... I know for a fact I've covered all areas. - Monotonous tasks from management: If management is planning on having a hunting blitz the next day, they're going to ask you to send them a list of un-touched accounts that you plan on going after. So pull up an Excel spreadsheet, put on some headphones, and kiss about an hour or two goodbye. Waste of time... if management wants reps to blitz accounts, THEY should choose them and send them to reps so that reps don't have to waste their time with such busy work. I lost dozens of deals on price. The only companies that spend the money are either gullible or they have budget to blow. RainKing is a great solution and helpful too, but I don't think I'd buy it unless I had plenty of money to spare. Also, the whole company's business model isn't scalable. They need too many employees to do what they do well (they don't have some necessary departments like a dedicated renewals team, or client success). They have a 'client success' team, but they're not really responsible for your accounts per se. You'll still be hearing from your clients every day for various things, which totally interrupts your work flow.

Cons

RainKing is still relatively a young company so you're bound to have growing pains. Don't get too attached to things or processes cause in a couple of months it's more than likely going to change.