Disappointing experience - Read all reviews carefully - Account Executive HubSpot Employee Review

2.0
Apr 27, 2023
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

Worked with some of the best sales reps in the industry and no doubt it helped me hone in on my negotiation skills. The product is world class and genuinely helped companies grow. Met some great people who I learned a lot from and there is a sense of togetherness from individual contributors in all departments to support one another through thick and thin. Top tier health insurance, "unlimited leave" and compensation in Sales was quite good

Cons

One of the reasons why I joined HubSpot was because it's renowned by Glassdoor as one of the best places to work. In my experience, the reality is very different. The company simply over hired more than they needed to meet investor expectations and there was not enough leads to go around for everyone. Firstly, onboarding was general introduction, how to sell HubSpot, personas etc. but no product training so there is a lot of 'figure it out yourself' which took time to find my system that works for me but if you don't after 6 months then it could automatically trigger a PIP. PIP appears to be a very normal thing at the Sales department and seems to be implemented more for "population control". While I understand the need for a systematic way, managers tend to use it as fear to motivate their teams and this leads to two things: burn-out and high attrition. In my first year alone, I saw 6 people that resigned or were asked to resign. It was almost as if we're trying to hit quota not to succeed but to survive and avoid a PIP. Managers alone passed that pressure onto us in Sales to start creating deals and do call blitzs each week which were simply unrealistic vanity numbers given the headwinds in the macroeconomics rather than focusing on having a clean pipe that actually have real opportunity to close for reps to spend most of their time. Feedback seems to be dismissive where managers are not receptive to a two-way system to be on the same page about working styles. It's almost as if their ego won't allow it or that they have never been wrong in their life when reps give their feedback on what support they need. This added more unnecessary stress and anxiety than it needed when everyone was already doing their very best within their control. One example is that after the layoffs, my "manager" called for a team meeting to check in on us but when I mentioned how it impacted me, I was brought aside were he said I had to be mindful about what I say or it could harm how I progress. When I gave context, he completely dismissed my feelings as well as my feedback when it was supposedly in a 'safe space'. I'm trying to be impartial as I can but after I read the reviews on Glassdoor and those who reported about having mental health issues deteriorating because of how managers leverage fear and PIPs to motivate, it is very true. It can be survival of the fittest. I've been in Sales for 8 years before I joined and I never seen anything quite like it where reps were crying after 1:1s and forecast meetings. The micromanagement even got me to the point where enough is enough and no job should ever come at the expense of your mental health. So my advice is read all the reviews very carefully and take both negative and positive reviews with a grain of salt especially the 5 star ones as they tend to be just one liners without any meaningful insight about the working culture.

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HubSpot Response
3y
Sorry to hear about your experience and that it fell short of expectations and what you read on Glassdoor. This is obviously just a very small part of your feedback, but we do have a formal upward feedback survey run by our HR team every year so hopefully that helps address that sliver of your feedback specifically, but hear you that there was a lot more to your experience that went awry. Appreciate you sharing so we can learn from it, Katie

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Cons

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2.0
May 22, 2026
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Pros

The teams you work with are phenomenal. The knowledge combination between an internal customer facing teams, engineering product development teams, and Sales are unmatched.

Cons

Excessive use of PIPs to oust employees after multiple high revenue launches, with no explanation, actual documentation, or factual data. Reviews have been adjusted to allow for terminations post pre-approved leaves. Salaries are a joke. You are always in a cover yourself mode 24/7. Management reviews are consistently a 2 or 3 out of 5 no matter what. If a team decides you aren’t in the group, management will put you on a “unofficial” PIP without telling you, in order to surprise you at a later date. Even if they are unfounded. Beware of possibility of negative backlash post launches. They will feel the need to assign blame ( such as for timelines or issues related to bugs). Regardless of performance or level of involvement. This is an enormous company with many large paths for career advancement. But micro management is rampant, leaving little room for doing the daily expectations of your actual role. This degrades your opportunities for career advancement.

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