Kong Reviews

Back-stabbing, politicking, general disorganization, dysfunction and an overall lack of trust is rampant across most teams. No clear direction on platform enhancements and product releases. Little to no enablement for employees outside of a dozen or so poor-quality training videos filmed with an iPhone or webcam. Sales leadership for North America is a train wreck, an utter disaster. The recent removal of the incompetent, narcissistic, toxic presence that had no business being in a leadership role, and everyone (sans leadership) knew it. Sales teams, following their leaders, are the first to point a finger at various support teams when deals go south, never taking ownership or responsibility for their own shortcomings and deficiencies. As a result, sales reps rarely earns the trust of prospective customers yet continually deflect blame across other support teams, while never being remotely in the stratosphere of hitting a quarterly number. However, if you can put together a pretty powerpoint for QBRs loaded with unattainable numbers and say "bullish about next quarter" every other sentence, management will look the other way as it relates to your multitude of deficiencies as a manager and you're golden. The corresponding attrition rate for employees on this team (and across the company, which now qualifies for "rats fleeing the ship" territory) is a direct result of leadership not demonstrating that it has the discipline or mettle to make immediate, widespread changes to sales and sales leadership to reverse course. Despite what is promised during the recruitment process or posted on the company website, you'll quickly learn that there are "Rules For Thee But Not For We" such as "Unlimited" PTO and "Unplug" Weekends, for example, where you'll find people Slacking and texting you as frantically as if it was the final hours of quarter-end, where the financial goal is nowhere in sight (which it usually isn't). The newly-added "Core Value" OWN IT is a joke. For many employees, and without question enterprise sales in the US, what OWN IT actually means when deals are hard (which is always), when deals push (which is frequent) and when deals are lost (which is often) is this: point fingers, deflect blame, and look for victims. When you find an unsuspecting victim, gaslight everyone. Never assess what you can do better or differently. Question how everyone other than yourself is doing their jobs. Introspection and looking for how the team can come together to improve are afterthoughts, at best. Rinse, repeat. There is a cancer at Kong. And it's killing this company.

This company has churned through SO MANY mid to senior level managers over the last few years. They have a story for why people came and went, but that story is only a half truth once you get the real story. They admit to having made a bad VP of Sales hire in the past, but then repeat it by hiring yet another toxic Enterprise Sales leader who clearly went to the Glengarry Glen Ross school of sales leadership. He is a bully, bad mouths his own people in meetings, and prides himself on making really fast snap judgments without any additional perspective. The CS team has had an absentee interim VP of CS for over a year. Great PS engineers and all of the lower level leadership have all churned or been let go. They intentionally under invest in this function, and then expect the team to be effective with too many customers to manage. Here are some other lowlights: *You can look forward to receiving your comp plan so late, you have no opportunity to hit it. It is nothing but excuses as to why you get it with 3 weeks left to go in the quarter. * When there are serious issues, senior leadership is more interested in finding blame than addressing issues or even simply offering to help. *If you get promoted, you will get saddled with all of the problems and responsibilities of that new role on day 1, but you will not get the formal title or pay bump for months as they string you along. It is common to be stuck in this mode for 6+ months before you get the formal recognition for the role you have been performing.