26 Jan 2019
ZoomInfo Response
7yI’m sorry you feel this way. I’m also sorry that your experience at DiscoverOrg wasn’t a good one across your last year. You were a solid member of our team and I wish we could have found a solution for you earlier.
Many of the points you raise are fair. We messed up your raise this year, and actually we messed up the raises for the whole CS team in 2018. I am sorry for that, if we could go back in time we’d have done it differently. We were glad you got it in the end, but you’re right, you shouldn’t have had to jump through hoops for it. Largely because of the lessons we learned from you (and others who spoke up), I’ve tried to acknowledge 2018’s mistake and make up for it by kicking off 2019 by increasing the base pay and commission for all CSMs. I wish you were here when that happened.
We’re growing quickly, when you grow quickly you tend to break things. What you hope to do is quickly identify them and fix them, and to identify them we need people like you to tell us when things are broken. The reality is, as long as we’re growing like this, every year we’ll probably break something new. So thank you for raising this.
Some of the points you raise I don’t think are fair. The nepotism claim for example. The only people who are friends of Henry’s from before DiscoverOrg’s founding are Andy, Derek, Michelle, and Russell. They’re all extremely well qualified for the positions they’re in. Derek’s responsible for the product you praised. Russell is one of our top sales leaders and blows out his numbers. Michelle has built a great HR team. Andy helped retention increase every year. To claim nepotism is to insult and dismiss their contributions and years of hard work. The rest of the management and executive ranks (>60) are either people who have risen up through the company or been hired from the outside due to their long experience and capability in their roles.
Henry is passionate and does yell. We don’t shy away from conflict and have found airing our disagreements is healthier than letting them build up. When Henry is yelling it is usually a passionate argument between two leaders of the company who have enough respect for one another to disagree openly, without fear of negative ramifications. Then the best idea wins and we rally behind it. Patrick Lencioni, author of the 5 Dysfunctions of a Team and The Advantage, discusses the benefits of conflict, that it can be very healthy in an environment where people trust and respect one another, and I think if he saw Henry and our team in action, he’d applaud our culture.
Similarly, you know that Henry knew your name. He cared about who you were on the team. He helped on your deals many times. I don’t think you’ll find many CEOs at a 500-person company who know the name of almost every single sales and account management person and cares about how they’re doing and helps on their deals.
Don’t get me wrong, Henry’s not perfect. None of us are. But he is trying, he does care, and it’s working: we are growing, people are building careers here, and every year at DiscoverOrg there are more people doing better financially than the year prior. To describe it otherwise is a mischaracterization.
Hard work - you mention I talked about working 11-12 hours days to get where I am. I did, and I’m proud of that. That’s not to say we expect every employee to do the same. Most people work 8-9 hours a day and longer when needed, when it’s “crunch time” at the end of a month or quarter, and that’s typical of sales and account management organizations. We’re grateful that they care enough about the company and their performance to put in those hours as needed, as you also did when you were here. Ultimately we’re proud of our culture of hard work.
To any of our current employees who read this, if you leave DiscoverOrg we won’t think you’re a quitter who couldn’t “tough it out”. That’s not how we view our employees. It’s natural that in a career you may find opportunities at other companies that are an advancement for you - and if you find one that’s better than what we’re able to offer you we’ll wish you well. Having said that, very few companies grow like DiscoverOrg. Few can offer the career advancement opportunities you have here. Our average Director has 3 years tenure before assuming a director role, far less than most companies, and that’s because of our growth. We believe strongly that our employees can build great careers here, and the career advancement opportunities they have here outweigh the vast majority of alternatives. And the data unequivocally supports that.
We’re human, we’ve definitely made some mistakes, and not making you feel valued here was one of the bigger ones I made last year. We’ll look to be better as we go forward, and if you ever want to sit down and discuss and give us suggestions on how we can be better, we would welcome the chance to listen.
-Patrick