Apollo GraphQL Reviews

This company is a case study in wasted potential. Despite being full of smart, kind, and capable people, it's trapped in a cycle of dysfunction driven by poor leadership at the very top. Over just six months, the CFO, CRO, and CPO all exited. Strong leaders who were never truly empowered to succeed. That’s not a coincidence... it’s a symptom of a deeper problem. The CEO lacks both the experience to scale a company and the temperament to build trust with those who do. There is a complete lack of self-awareness or understanding of what motivates people or how to partner. Worse, those who try to bring clarity or challenge broken systems rarely last. Decision-making is erratic. Strategy is more reactive than visionary. And behind closed doors, it’s even more chaotic than it looks from the outside. Today, another 25% of the company was cut, including swaths of Sales and Marketing team. Most telling was the gutting of the People team, one of the only groups working to build culture, trust, and humanity in a company sorely lacking all three. Their removal sends a clear message: those values aren’t a priority. This is not a company that learns from its mistakes. It’s stuck. Three years after the last major layoff, it's in virtually the same place, because leadership refuses to face the real issues. The co-founders, particularly the CEO, continue to undermine any chance at sustainable progress.

Company Performance: Previous 3 quarters have been a disaster. Not close to ACV targets. Attrition through roof. Marquee customers leaving platform. Hiring posts online are completely fake to make it look like company is doing well. Culture/Environment: Worse than Lacework reputation -- micromanagement stemming from insecurity. Complete focus on wrong things (i.e. making all important features free, which make the Enterprise platform impossible to sell). Everything is fear-based -- everyone, from reps to managers, is afraid to speak out because everyone is afraid for his/her job. Apollo talks about firing reps as casually as the weather -- crazy to think that they are so nonchalant about peoples' livelihoods. Firing reps (as if that is going to help) and not looking at systemic issues at company (i.e. CRO, CEO/CTO, immature leaders, NO enablement/coaching; lack of product; lack of vision). Leadership: Can't make good decisions and can do no wrong -- blame everyone and push problems down to IC-level rather than fix systemic challenges. Retaliation against those who have spoken out. No accountability or quality control. Product: Enterprise platform just not there -- all good features were made free, leaving reps with nothing to actually sell (only things in reps' bag to sell are Contracts and SSO/Auth). Customers are leaving platform so easily, because they can "take their data" out of our managed service yet their Graph still runs. Metrics for Sales/Sales Motion: Need 3 net-new meetings (NNM) a week. Those who hit it are faking it 75% of the time. No quality control on this -- some reps count cold call connects as NNM. ADRs get no coaching and do not help book actual pipeline. More than 80% of deals closed last year came from inbound leads, but there's a broken inbound model. Inbound leads do not get routed to sales reps -- they get routed to ADR manager, who either doesn't work them or puts them in a generic Outreach sequence. Accounts are not assigned -- most inbound or interest coming from Mid-Market-type accounts, but these are not touched. AEs only get 30 Strategic accounts that we hammer into the ground -- completely incorrect ICP -- and we get nowhere then get blamed for lack of pipeline. All falls on AE, not account team as a whole. Nothing wrong with having a plan and accountability, but there is no trust or ability to own your business.