Highspot 

Germany 

Gmbh

Unternehmenskultur

In Central Europe: Practically non-existent. After the peak in 2022, the team became smaller and the collaboration became siloed to an extent where you feel rather like a hired freelancer instead of an actual team member. The frequent office relocations were not a positive contributor, let alone the absolute lack of a local administration (office management, HR, finance, legal etc.).

With EMEA: Similar impression, albeit marginally better thanks to a mostly collaborative, experienced team, regardless of the department.

With the global departments: A hit or miss, depending on who you got in touch with (US, Canada, India). Since the collapse of the Silicon Valley Bank (SVB) in 2023, the resulting passive strategy on the investors' part at that time and the corresponding multiple reorgs at Highspot, once smooth processes paid tribute to red tape and occasional misunderstandings.

The first out of only two strengths that remained prevalent. However, this is rather the merit of a mixture between sales having had trouble to attract significant accounts for years, a predictable book of business, the option to work remotely and the FlexLeave policy.

In constant deterioration since 2023, regardless of the region.

Throughout multiple quarters in a row, entire teams were either reduced, redefined or entirely dissolved. The result: Teams with a solid headcount were split up, isolating those who used to work well together, while some of the newly formed teams consist either of 1 person or a handful of people for an entire region. Red tape galore, whenever you needed an AE or CSM to catch up on an account.

Additionally, attempts to blindly inject the competitive sales mindset across the company served as another catalyst to the worsening state of belonging.

On a direct managerial level, much was left to be desired to promote my career in a meaningful way for a variety of reasons, including multiple maternal leaves and the overall weak impact of the Central European unit on the revenue and company image. Therefore, my progression and accomplishments were not tracked properly, along with my potentials to thrive. Weekly 1:1 project status meetings, quarterly check-ins and vague annual reviews were definitely not the way to go.

The managerial levels above experienced a transformation towards a more corporate, top-down anonymous style of leadership. Logically, this hampered the lower-level management's ambitions to improve the situation or to retain Highspot's former strengths.

Globally, frank enough to not sugarcoat the consequences of the events from 2023 until today. However, the staff has never really recovered from the blows that the frequent reorgs gave over the years. Therefore, the morale from the better days has never been regained. The communicated corporate vision, becoming more vague by the year, weakened the sense of purpose.

The unit in Central Europe is a mere recipient of news from the HQs in the UK and the US. Strategically, it has never been a significant part of the strategic vision, let alone of the revenue machine.

Since the Central Europe unit remained weak in acquiring accounts and building a local book of business, the main priority revolved around managing accounts from the Northern Europe, US or ANZ portfolio.

Unless you were the one coordinating the projects from the start, it was your duty to reactively put out any fire for months that the predecessors left behind. Just after that you could gain the space to work towards actual value-adding activities.

However, because the 360° tracking of the individual performance and impact became dramatically flawed since 2023, it really made one question the sense of maintaining a strong performance.