If you want to innovate, stay far away from this "innovation" company - Anonymous employee Sopheon Employee Review

The amateur leadership in this organization is some of the worst I've ever seen. There is so much finger pointing between executives - the negativity and blame between departments is a clear indictment of this ineffective, even harmful leadership team. Most departments are "on defense" rather than working as "One Sopheon". It all starts with the CEO, who doesn't have the insight or intuition to hire the right leaders. When he does find experienced leaders, he won't get out of the way and allow them to make real change. In recent months, many talented people (and their years of valuable knowledge), have fled or are actively looking to leave from years of burnout or lack of vision and measurable action from the executive team. The company culture is a demoralizing nightmare, but the product itself is just a crumbling mess. If you are a software engineer who enjoys refactoring 15+ years of legacy code and bad decisions, this is the place for you! If you enjoy having to apologize to dissatisfied customers on a regular basis, this is definitely the place for you! But... If you want to innovate, stay far away from this "innovation" company. The CEO is primarily focused on big fish customers, and will over commit anything to secure a deal, He simply can't say "No" and readily sacrifices long term strategy for shortsighted, unsustainable financial gains. The product has become so fractured, non-intuitive and overly complicated because of tangential commitments that derail any real strategic growth. With all the "technical debt" and customer fire drills, there is never time to differentiate or even keep pace with competitors. Product release plans are dominated by technical engineering and sales, so delivering anything innovative or market focused is a pipe dream. Pre-Sales and Client Services are left to cobble together custom code to provide "smoke and mirror" stop gap solutions to prospects, analysts and even customers. Additionally, this company will tout its position on agility, but the CEO runs the company like it's a product company from the 1980s, insisting on heavy documentation to "validate" concepts that are already gaining obvious traction or proven in the market. He's a fan of verbosity in everything he does or asks for. Why say something concise and understandable when you can make people read a novel of bloated buzzwords that lack meaning and just confuse? There is so much waste and smoke screening in this organization and so little action. In reality, the only action this company takes is reaction - to an antiquated product that simply can't fulfill the unrealistic promises made to customers.