Very mixed rollercoaster - Product Manager Qualtrics Employee Review

3.0
Oct 13, 2020
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

People here have been extremely supportive of my personal career development. This has been the primary reason for me staying at Qualtrics given the cons outlined below. Our high growth environment means there are many personally fulfilling, high impact projects that lead to a fun workload.

Cons

TENURE BASED PROMOTION AND RATING SYSTEM. We tout being a meritocracy (to the point it was included in our prior S-1), but this is simply not true. You have to be in level for 2 years before becoming eligible for promotion (the promotion cycles are 6 months apart). By being in level 2 years, I literally mean 2 years - I started in October 2 years ago, the same month as the promotion cycles, but they cut off to the exact day so I'm not actually eligible. While there is an exception process, it is notoriously impossible to get through. Additionally, the rating system is also tenure based. For the first rating cycle, even if your boss tells you that you've outperformed expectations, are ramping extremely quickly, and delivering high impact, you can still only ever get "meets expectations" (my boss had directly told me she thought I deserved higher but couldn't give me anything other than meets since I was only 6 months into the job). Even more unfortunately, this has a direct impact eligibility for the exception process, enforcing the tenure based cycle. The early indication is we're being ripped off in our share conversion ratio for going back into an independent company. Decisions are made by a small few in the organization. No permenat WFH options. Post-COVID, this might be the straw that breaks my back and forces me to leave for somewhere else. Communication is lacking. For example, we've made a statement that we want to lead the industry in slowly returning to work. However, it's now 2 months from our return date and all the big tech companies have pushed out into mid-2021, yet there's been crickets on what our plan is. One of many examples. VERY political for a company of our size (this was the case pre-SAP). Biggest surprise.

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Qualtrics Response
5y
Thank you for taking time to leave a review. While a person’s time in a role may vary, we don’t have a flat 2-year rule. In our earliest career levels, people can be eligible in as little as 9 months. But the expectations for time spent in a role exist because we think of promotion readiness as sustained high performance. We know it takes time to ramp, grow through a level, and show that you’re ready for a level-based promotion. We’ve benchmarked our timelines with similar companies and set our trajectory here is ahead of market. Since this review was left, further information about our return to office has been shared, and if you have further questions, we would encourage you to reach out to your local HRBP for clarification.

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* No company vision * Pay is mediocre * Lack of growth opportunities * HR is TRASH! You will not be heard nonetheless * Sales driven, which is fine, but that changes every decision the company makes * Lack of product direction mainly because management sucks!! They cannot even prepare a decent product strategy document for a given FY. They ask the L4-L7 levels to come with product goals that they think are important! As long as you produce a BS concept on AI for your product, you are a star, you don’t have to even deliver it! Success metrics are only for the papers, they don’t care if they’re generating any revenue from it!

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