Double edged business model and harrowing sales culture - Corporate Account Executive MongoDB Employee Review

3.0
16 Sept 2016
Recommend
CEO approval
Business outlook

Pros

Excellent sales training and methodology. You learn processes that will help you in any sales job for the rest of your career. Perks are nice (subsidised meals twice a week, etc) and the location is great. As a team we all got on well and that's really important in a small office. Interactions with other offices were always professional, fun and productive. The technology is really key in today's business, and the company is working very hard to take a turn and move to a profitable business model (as opposed to a free open source model that stands in the way).

Cons

The company decided to start with an open source model but to the extent that everything was free, and even the enterprise version was not gated in any way. When the time came to boost sales and deploy teams across various geos, we came across very strong adoption but absolutely no incentive to pay a single cent to MongoDB, be it a carrot approach or a stick approach. We ended up closing certain deals purely on price. The sales team moved from inside sales / field sale to a revenue tier system. In the ESMB / MM corporate sales space, adoption was high (they're agile organisations) but sales were often quite low (why pay when the free version, free training and free support cover all your needs). Enterprise reps could get more traction with features or compliance reasons. It's not to say there's no way to close really nice deals in both corporate and enterprise sales, but walk in there with your eyes open on how you're going to reach your number. The sales culture is very regimented but that didn't bother me: you get trained extremely well, everyone is aligned with the same process, there are excellent sales tools that are very well implemented. What happens next depends on your manager, how experienced they are and how they execute on the company motto of "sell big or go home". Not closing enough business for two months in a row can get you in a PIP. Not making your number for 3 quarters in a row means no promotion and your annual attainment doesn't come into play.There's a lot of micromanagement around activities and hours and behaviour instead of encouraging brainstorming sessions or war rooms on deals. If you're lucky enough to click with your manager, you'll be fine. If not, you may have a hard time. There's very little to no space for slackers and it's both normal and a good thing. Some managers take it to the next level however and will come down on you like a ton of bricks because their notion of what's not okay is very different from yours!

Explore other reviews about MongoDB

5.0
2 Jun 2026
Recommend
CEO approval
Business outlook

Pros

Development, Comp, shares, work from home

Cons

Big Machine with Bureaucracy, inertia for certain programs

2.0
23 Mar 2026
Anonymous employee
Recommend
CEO approval
Business outlook

Pros

Most benefits are solid, exception being no matching 401K which is kind of insane for tech. Embraces the use of AI for all employees.

Cons

MongoDB is extremely dysfunctional from a marketing POV. The functional silos built a culture of no collaboration and just checking boxes of doing the same things over and over again. Leadership at the MLT level is out of their depth for what the business needs out of marketing to grow. There is arrogance encouraged by a bully CMO who has her favorites that can be held to different standards than others and it is abundantly clear. That attitude trickles down into all of MLT and never really offer solutions, just criticisms. Pay is lower than other companies for the same role. Lack of clarity of what it takes to get a promotion. Blatant disregard for Employee Engagement surveys that have been on a decline for years that leadership takes no ownership on improving.

3
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