Twilio Reviews

Cons

The diverse products and the product first philosophy means it’s sometimes difficult to tell a connected, more strategic, story across the business, both for sales and ultimately for customers.

Cons

Where to start, Comp is a complete mess and it’s very well known. Usage based models make for no one hitting their OTE, even if you somehow perform. Highly recommend asking to see the comp mechanics before accepting a job. Performance, the Commerical team has had less than half of the entire team hit quota the past two quarters, and were tracking the same this quarter if not worse.,. We’re drowning and no one notices bc overall somehow the sales org hits with 1 or 2 overachievers. Healthy sales team should have at least 75% minimum of people achieving numbers. Next up, Enablement is the worse I’ve ever seen. It’s a total joke. The product is really complex and there’s no enablement help on how to SELL this, unless you work with your manager (who’s spread soo thin with teams of 12+) you’re in for an uphill, confusing battle.

Bottom line: you won’t hit your OTE, you will hardly understand comp and have NO way to audit it (comp team continually has errors that we have to manually try to find ourselves), lead flow is minimal and for pennies. Territories are expected to do the same production and growth (so someone in Arkansas or Missouri has to hit the same # as developed Bay Area or NY) meaning don’t expect to hit your quota. Its a broken machine and no ones fixing it.

Care about your people. Realize that we are beaten down, apathy is running rampant. Even though the stock is strong, see that no one is performing (unless you are an anomaly and have a lucky lead). At the moment Senior Leadership seems to not notice bc this doesn’t affect them, when people start leaving then will you notice and fix this? Act before it’s too late, people love Twilio and we want to feel like we can succeed!

Cons

1. Compensation.
- As mentioned by several other reps, the comp plan is a mess. If you are interviewing I recommend asking management and the recruiters to explain it to you as simply as possible. Chances are they won't be able to. Ask to see a version of this 20+ page document before accepting a job offer with Twilio. If you don't understand it then you shouldn't sign up to be a part of it - this advice applied to current and prospective reps.

2. Infrastructure
- Twilio is hiring sales people like crazy but the legal, sales ops, sales engineers, etc. are lagging behind. It takes a village to get these complicated deals done and you can only get so far into a deal cycle without having basic infrastructure in place. Major deals are likely to get stalled or will be lost because turnaround time just isn't quick enough.

3. Unacceptable behavior
Sexual harassment allegations are disturbing and uncomfortable to say the least. You shouldn't need a third party to intervene to tell your employees how to behave appropriately while on and off the job.

Cons

As the company grows, continual focus on the fundamentals will be important.

Cons

Product and sales do not work very well together
Lack of forecasting/predictability on sales side

Cons

Ok, so some of the less glamorous aspects:

Twilio's model for designing and shipping new products has... shall we say... some areas for improvement. There's an almost exhausting race to find the next biggest, brightest thing to go after. As a result we have a lot of floundering old projects because we're bad at retiring products but really good at running at breakneck speed towards the next new announcement. Churning our products quickly creates engineering issues. Also, it's just plain exhausting for our engineers and it drives marketing to insanity for every launch.

And we preach wearing the customer's shoes, but the shoes we try to wear are a tiny group of customers who will generate the most revenue. Product Managers are missing exposure to a larger set of customer issues that literally prohibit some users from adopting Twilio, and there's no easy way for them to get more expansive qualitative feedback.

Also, most importantly, Twilio is essentially propped up by a subset of really, really amazing executors. We know informally who a lot of these people are. Lots of them are employees who have been at the company for many years, like myself. They have a lot of institutional knowledge. And they are quitting. In droves. It's not unexpected in a post-IPO world, but the company seems highly reactive when a valued hard worker with tons of tribal knowledge announces plans to leave. I hope HR has plans for retaining what small long-standing talent remains or keeping people who've been around for a while more united. Especially within our sales force, where the majority of employees are new and reorgs are not uncommon.

Cons

Lots of growth comes with some growing pains.

Cons

1. An incredibly concerning number of sexual harassment allegations within the sales organization
2. Lack of clarity regrading compensation. You will not have any idea how much your quarterly commission check will be until you receive it 45 days after the quarter. At that point it is almost certain to be short by a significant amount (ie thousands of dollars)
3. Disappointing sales leadership - lack of experience, blatant nepotism with middle management hiring reps with whom they've previously worked with vs. hiring based on merit, expectation that every territory has the ability to produce the same amount of revenue
4. Morale is very low. Many reps will willingly tell you that they are actively looking for employment elsewhere.

Cons

OMG where do I start? Twilio is an awful place to work as a salesperson. They have been having a sales hiring surge over the last year after the new COO came to Twilio from Salesforce. He is trying to make Twilio into Salesforce's image and is making it a terrible sales culture. So much change in territories and comp plans that it was impossible to build a pipeline. The comp plan is so hard to understand that reps just give up trying to figure it out. (30 pages long) Twilio pays comp 4 times a year. 45 days after the end of the quarter. And when they do pay comp it is usually wrong. There are constant battles between sales, operations and legal. The processes are so arduous to follow and they are constantly changing. And you better watch out if you want anything done quickly. The legal and operations teams have no sense of urgency. and if you do need something done outside of the process they will penalize you for it . There are so many cliques at Twilio that if you are not in the "cool crowd" then you are isolated and ignored. Favoritism is rampant. Reps who are favored get all the good leads and opportunities. Executive sales leadership is the worst I have ever experienced. They do not value salespeople who color outside the lines and if you upset the wrong person you get fired for some trumped up reason. If you don't fit into their sales model then they find ways to make you exit the company. Cutting territories, moving people around and reassigning accounts and pipeline. If you have a problem with management don't go to HR. All they do is tell your manager what you said. Bottom line-Twilio is a horrible place to work for salespeople.

Cons

Some, very minor growing pains associated with this meteoric rise to $1B and beyond. However that is to be expected. And management works quickly and diligently to address them. That is really all you can ask for.