Productboard Reviews

Woof. Where to begin? Let's acknowledge that Product Management software, especially in today's economy, is a tough market to crack. The software itself is helpful, but not essential to business success, regardless of how hard the Marketing team tries to say otherwise. However, the real reason behind Productboard's demise is the leadership, specifically CEO Hubert's approach. His style is, frankly, concerning. Take, for instance, his comments on the layoffs in November 2022. Describing them as "trimming the fat" shows a lack of empathy for the people who lost their jobs, people whose livelihoods depended on those positions. Then there was that EPD all-hands meeting late last year. Hubert said that if employees didn't have the 'passion' required to sleep at their desks, the company wouldn't succeed. It didn't stop there. After that meeting, in a Slack message, he said he expected those without children to work 100 hours a week and those with children, 50 hours. Not only were the expectations laid out in channels where they've been recorded, screenshot, and gossiped about to no end, but they were made to a company that has just as many contractors as it does full-time employees. That's right, folks, Productboard won't pay your benefits or offer you stock options, but they WILL require you to work more than 40 hours a week-- or accuse you of being passion-less and lay you off. Hubert's leadership style has had an unfortunate trickle-down effect on the rest of the company. The C-Suite team is made up entirely of yes-men who are too afraid to challenge him on his terrible business decisions-- and honestly, I don't blame them. Nobody wants to deal with the verbal abuse that would surely follow. You might wonder why the board hasn't stepped in and fired him. Good question! As the majority shareholder, Hubert is steering this ship straight into the ground.

I say this with all sincerity - unless you’re on the verge of homelessness, do not join this company. You will likely be out of a job within 6-months as it feels like it’s in a death spiral. Maybe you’ve even experienced this before - being asked to do worthless things that are ineffective and reek of desperation, having to listen to the CEO’s unhinged rambling and his execs spin spin spin (or in some cases just flat out lie), watch critical product improvements get delayed months, sometimes years. In the last year, there have been three “official” layoffs, but an uncountable number of unofficial ones, where people are just there one day and gone the next. A new president came in and hired up a team of enterprise dudes (that’s right - all men) who will quickly discover the product is unsellable to large companies. And unusable to current customers, who are churning faster than anyone can keep track (CEO will say the problem is just on the commercial side - it’s not). Leads from marketing are drying up, as the new CMO is a puppet for the president, an unprofessional gossiper, but most concerning - does not understand demand generation. All of these things (despite how Hubert might spin it) point in one obvious direction - make the company appear profitable and product-focused in the hopes of getting sold quickly.