A Career Building Opportunity with Major Asterisks
Pros
I'll start with saying I have absolutely no regrets looking back at my tenure at Verkada. Coming from a non traditional SaaS sales background, they fast tracked my development as an expert seller. While much of that was by virtue of at bats, rather than coaching or guidance, it allows for tremendous growth if you are willing to completely throw yourself at the job. That being said, there are major considerations any candidate should consider before accepting a job offer at Verkada. There are many outlier reviews on Glassdoor from incredibly disgruntled ex employees to current "kool aid drinking" reps. Hopefully this review serves as somewhere in the middle, outlining the objective pros and cons as a sales rep. Pros: - You can sell to anyone. Facilities, IT, HR, Security, Operations, you name it. The TAM is MASSIVE and with a creative approach to out-bounding you can build a decent self serviced pipeline. - The product fit is the best I've seen. You are competing against dinosaurs who can't keep up with innovation or simplicity Verkada offers. The "in kind" competitors are a fraction of the size of Verkada and will always be bottom feeders and relatively easily dismissed. - Large top of funnel pipeline (qualified leads is a big issue though) - All upsell business and renewals get credited to you. There are not many tech companies in the bay allow commissions on renewals or growth, and upsell is a huge part of the Verkada sales strategy that you get paid out on. - They are receptive to creative GTM ideas. Got a good idea for a new vertical to target or event to be at? You'll get limited pushback from leadership/marketing to do it with financial backing. - The People team is really trying to atone for the sins of their fathers. Verkada was once the wild west, where misogyny, bro culture, and an overall toxic workplace was common (just look at the 2019/2020 reviews). That has since changed a lot starting towards the end of 2020, mainly helmed by the new head of people, Dervilla. There have been a few incidents that occurred while I was there that were swiftly handled, without any fumbles like their original PR crisis. Kudos to the entire people team for working to make Verkada a much more inclusive place to work (with still, lots more work to do).
Cons
- Work/Life balance. Not only is the expectation to be in the office 5 days a week , but 9 hours is just not enough to be successful there. Early mornings (especially if you are working the east cost with a 6am start) and late nights. Come prepared to completely throw yourself at this job. - Immaturity: From the IC level to management. This is not uncommon in silicon valley tech sales, but feels especially pervasive here. As an AE, your AE counterpart in the seat next to you could be as young as 23. You will be coached and given council on the same template as that co worker (regardless of your age or how much experience you carry going into the role). Pipeline looking soft? More dials. Deal stuck in middle of funnel? Just bring in your mid 20 year old manager to hammer discounting incentives. Any tenured rep coming into Verkada as a Mid Market rep will get annoyed with this dynamic very quickly. - Territory equality: Verkada has grown their salesforce 3-4x over the past couple years. With growth comes territory splits. As I mentioned, Verkada is unique in having tremendous success in a land expand sales strategy. So, when territory's are split, current customers should be accounted in that right? Nope. In the most backwards logic I witnessed at Verkada, that was only about 15% of the decision when splitting territories. That perpetuates huge inequalities amongst reps. You could have one of those fresh out of SDR bootcamp reps, take over a territory with a built out customer base, while you still work to grow your own book of business. The "territory lottery" term often cited on many of these reviews are true. There is no equality in sales territories at Verkada, so you just have to hope you are one of those reps that get a good territory when you join. - Just as there are outliers in reviews on Glassdoor, there are outliers for performance. The 200%+ to plan stories recruiters will sell you are not the norm. For every 200%+ rep there are <50% reps. Because of the con mentioned above, those distributions are not often based on merit. If you are joining, plan on making your OTE at best case for budgeting purposes. - You are valued on your sales performance. While this again is not unique to Verkada, you can quickly feel undervalued and inadequate if you underperform 1 quarter. The attachment to revenue and self worth this company has will become very hard to shake, which could have implications even in your life outside of work. If you join Verkada, make sure to recognize that dynamic early on and refuse to buy into it, for the sake of your own mental health. - Meaningless equity now. Your equity package SHOULD NOT be a needle mover for you in considering Verkada as a MM Sales Rep. Your equity package as a sales rep, as an example, will be about 1/30 to that of an entry level engineer. If you want to see what your equity package is worth, take your 1 year equity cliff amount and multiply it by the current stock price of a similar style publicly traded company like Samsara. That will give you a real idea of your equity's worth.
