Poor Sales Leadership - Est. Fall 2018
Pros
Market leaders whose product is helping to change the world and make mass electric transportation possible. Employees are all very smart and motivated people. There is a good amount of autonomy given which is great. Great modern office space. I appreciate the town halls that relay a culture of transparency, at least around major topics (product, financials, etc). Health benefits are great. Led by a CEO with great vision and respected by the industry.
Cons
There is one basic theme to why this company could fail and is slowly failing (or not operating highly at all levels), and that is senior leadership. The senior sales leadership is highly disconnected from the rest of the company. They're all operating from an Ivory Tower. They are not the inviting type or ones that truly have an open door policy. Outside of the CEO, I haven't noticed that any of the other leaders at the company are industry thought leaders. Most came in with little to no specific industry experience and only to chase profits and crack the corporate whip. Everyone knows the future of successful innovative companies is hiring employees AND LEADERS who can identify with the mission and are motivated by passion not just titles, high compensation packages, and equity payouts. The Chief Revenue Officer (CRO), that was hired around 2018 is single-handedly destroying the sales culture and continues to do so by removing key successful players. He forced out the previous and beloved leader of sales just so he could have everything go his way. He lost a lot of respect and confidence from the sales org after that happened. It appears he is given a lofty compensation package to simply give weekly pep talks that add little value. I don't believe he owns even one account and barely knows how to properly pitch/sell the entire product line. I'll never understand how companies pick their executive management. It must just be a Silicon Valley buddy system versus who actually adds value. His ego is fragile and he does everything he can to protect that first. He rewards employees who kiss up to him and ignores/chastises ones who don't worship him. I've heard through other people and directly experienced firsthand how he makes disrespectful and non-professional comments to employees who he wants out. I have no doubt this man has unresolved personal wounds/trauma that he projects and takes out professionally and it is deteriorating the sales organization not to mention people's own self-esteem. The guy is unrelatable. Like we know you're getting wealthy off our hard work. We don't need you also promoting it in our face with videos taken from your boat, airstream, and now pool. He shares weekly pep talks that are known to provide useless updates and worse, has made comments that hold little compassion or empathy. Within 24 hours of celebrity Kobe Bryant's death he grossly used it as an example to motivate the sales team to "compete as he did". Disgusting. Many males in management are extremely broey and act like frat bros. There are middle managers who gather to drink scotch/whiskey in the office after hours but that invite doesn't seem to make it's way to "others" in the office. The company has no system to get feedback from lower/junior level employees up to senior leadership. Instead, executive leadership gets all their information filtered from middle management, managers who are typically looking out for themselves and less for their direct reports. It's a very selfish and political environment that all started once the new CRO stepped in in 2018. Prepare to have your managers take all the credit because the company culture here doesn't foster checks & balances, instead they thrive on favoritism. This company is heavy on Top down management. In all my time at ChargePoint, the CRO never once reached out directly to praise our team's work, learn more about our role or challenges, or make an offer on how to help us thrive even more. The company leadership (at all levels) is predominately males and lacks diversity in color and gender. In fact, early on after George Floyd's death, leadership couldn't even directly say "Black Lives Matter" or address the social movement, skirting around the issue with phrases like "The current events in the US" and "what is going on in the United States at the moment". Again, it just shows that the "leaders" here are solely business people, not community leaders. They rest easy knowing they are the market leader and that will surely cost them long term as they neglect proper management of their #1 asset, human capital.
