Horrible place to work if you are in sales - Sales Twilio Employee Review

1.0
21 Mar 2018
Recommend
CEO approval
Business outlook

Pros

Decent product with name recognition with an impressive list of customers.

Cons

OMG where do I start? Twilio is an awful place to work as a salesperson. They have been having a sales hiring surge over the last year after the new COO came to Twilio from Salesforce. He is trying to make Twilio into Salesforce's image and is making it a terrible sales culture. So much change in territories and comp plans that it was impossible to build a pipeline. The comp plan is so hard to understand that reps just give up trying to figure it out. (30 pages long) Twilio pays comp 4 times a year. 45 days after the end of the quarter. And when they do pay comp it is usually wrong. There are constant battles between sales, operations and legal. The processes are so arduous to follow and they are constantly changing. And you better watch out if you want anything done quickly. The legal and operations teams have no sense of urgency. and if you do need something done outside of the process they will penalize you for it . There are so many cliques at Twilio that if you are not in the "cool crowd" then you are isolated and ignored. Favoritism is rampant. Reps who are favored get all the good leads and opportunities. Executive sales leadership is the worst I have ever experienced. They do not value salespeople who color outside the lines and if you upset the wrong person you get fired for some trumped up reason. If you don't fit into their sales model then they find ways to make you exit the company. Cutting territories, moving people around and reassigning accounts and pipeline. If you have a problem with management don't go to HR. All they do is tell your manager what you said. Bottom line-Twilio is a horrible place to work for salespeople.

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Twilio Response
8y
We appreciate you taking the time to write this review, and of course, wish you had a different experience. We have experienced tremendous growth and change on the Sales side, and recognize that a number of our Sales Ops processes needed to change to meet the needs of a growing Sales team. The Sales Op team has expanded considerably and are dedicated to easing the stress on the systems and processes and have made good progress. The People team and your HRBP is a safe place to bring forward any concerns along with your leadership team. There are some circumstances where an HRBP is obligated to bring forward concerns or experiences and these would be discussed, but otherwise these resources are there for Twilions to access to assist in anyway they can be helpful. Thank you for your feedback, and we wish you well in your new endeavors.

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5.0
5 Jun 2026
Recommend
CEO approval
Business outlook

Pros

The culture and team and compensation is great

Cons

Working remote can start to feel really remote sometimes

2.0
9 Mar 2026
Recommend
CEO approval
Business outlook

Pros

Comp is fair, benefits are okay. If you are lucky with a low maintenance book of business you can clock roughly 20 hours a week and hit all your goals. I saw this happen to multiple sellers over my tenure.

Cons

The reason I left was in Jan 2026 they re-orged all of the Segment business unit into Twilio. We went from being traditional Segment SaaS sellers to Twilio Account Managers. You have no prospects only existing clients. You spend your day in Zendesk managing tickets, there are zero actual sales activities. Your quota is comprised of organic revenue growth that would occur whether you existed or not. Upside is limited. - Leadership Churn: I worked here for 16 months and during that time I had 5 managers. They couldn't hang onto anyone. - No review or raise during my 16 months here, despite exceeding my quota. - Promotions: you cannot just crush in your role and get promoted. There needs to be a promotion spot available somewhere in your business unit and then you compete with other sellers for it. Your role will not change, your accounts and clients will not change, only your comp will. So why the limited promotion availability?

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