Downhill fast - Customer Success Manager Optimizely Employee Review

2.0
23 May 2025
Recommend
CEO approval
Business outlook

Pros

- Decent pay and benefits depending on where you live - Great if you are in Dhaka because they pay well for Bangledesh so that they could fire expensive Americans & Europeans

Cons

- Leadership has been assuming they were going to sell for 4 years; they made NO long term plan and it shows. They like to pretend that it's a well kept secret they're selling and punish people for mentioning it even though it's just basic business logic - They've promoted all the people who don't know how to do the job and chased off or fired every talented employee they've had - They continually change their plans because they don't understand the long term and then punish their teams for not immediately changing and making a better quarter for themselves on policies implemented mid-quarter - They punish feedback and difficult questions, holding meeting to "answer questions" but screening out anything that isn't congratulatory - Every C-level exec is on their first ever C-level job; it's the blind leading the blind. They're all too green to deal with the hand they've been dealt - They did too many mergers - they are using money from the profitable products to try to make the other products usable, but instead they're just making their good product stop evolving and making them not worth the cost then blaming their CS and Sales teams for not working hard enough - Systematically fired every ERG leader so those groups don't take up attention except the ones lead directly by the head of HR, so there's no one to speak up about the fact that internally they score high on diversity even though the company is mostly white and almost entirely lead by men - They only hire leaders out of SAP, a tech giant with out of date products, it's practically a cult. Look up any leader listed on the site and you'll see their history is SAP. -

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Optimizely Response
1y
I am sorry to hear of your experience. There has been a lot of change in customer success org within the last year to transform our organization, focusing on infrastructure, forecasting process, deep product knowledge and contract negotiation experience. This ensures we focus on customer retention to ensure their value and success. We understand these changes in CS take time to adopt. We have a high bar for performance and this is a core part of our culture. ERG leads are held to high performance expectations like others and they are not immune to restructuring decisions either. We reached 91 percent favorability for our recent pulse check on Optimizely as an inclusive company and remain proud of our culture, while we continue to focus on building a pipeline of diverse talent for recruitment. Indeed we have given people development opportunities, inclusive of our exec team. We have a highly advanced ELT with strong entrepreneurial leadership, global experience, tech thought leadership, client relationship, business acumen, financial stewardship and people focus. We can assure you that we hire other leaders that are not just from SAP and the company has a diverse leadership team, in line with market. In terms of our product strategy, we made conscious decisions to build a suite and secure the best products on market. We recently acquired Netspring - native warehouse analytics that gives huge ROI to link with experimentation. We have a solid operating plan to focus on rule of 40 and this plan has been regularly shared on monthly OA calls. The plan goes beyond the current year so rest assured there is solid long term planning. People understand that there are decisions the leadership makes to ensure we meet our strategy. Adaptability is a key part of success. Wishing you the best of luck.

Explore other reviews about Optimizely

5.0
28 Apr 2026
Recommend
CEO approval
Business outlook

Pros

Great job on enabling us on AI

Cons

No issues at the moment.

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Optimizely Response
4w
We truly appreciate your feedback and your commitment over the past year. At Optimizely, we are committed to being an AI-first company, and a huge part of that is ensuring our team has the tools and training needed to succeed. Hearing that you feel well-enabled on our AI initiatives is a strong validation of that effort. Thank you for your hard work!
2.0
31 May 2026
Recommend
CEO approval
Business outlook

Pros

- Active customer base - Modern product - Opportunity for leadership exposure

Cons

- Dismissive promotion culture - Pay is mediocre; employees with more senior titles making the same as less senior employees - Poor career advancement and recognition - Lack of career guidance, support, and proper feedback - “Pull your socks up” mentality with little clarity into promotion opportunity - “You should be grateful to work here” culture

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