Pros
When I joined Outreach - there was so much promise. Incredible teammates, great culture, strong product, everyone truly marching in the same direction towards something great. Outreach has hired some incredibly bright and talented people that were certainly the bright spot during my time at the company.
Cons
The SVP of People at Outreach shared an incredible piece of advice with me: that your truth is always neutral and should be shared. Below is my true experience at Outreach and I sincerely hope that it helps. The company has changed significantly and is no longer one I would recommend to those in my network, and frankly after seeing how customers are treated - I would not recommend this product to any company that I work for in the future. I would really think hard about joining this company, especially if you plan on building a family. I went out on maternity leave and upon returning - had the worst experience of my professional career thus far. Before returning to work - I contacted HR as I was not mentally nor physically fit or ready to return to work and was told that it would be “employee abandonment” if I did not show up on my return date. My boss at the time was very understanding and worked with me on a slow “ramp” back into the business during the month of my return. After this month was up, I started asking my manager and HR what was happening with my job as I did not have a team nor any direct responsibilities. My position was temporarily filled while I was on leave and while the expectation was for that individual to hire a separate team - in Q4 hiring slowed down and upon coming back - there was no team for me to manage and my role as it was not returned to me. I remained in this limbo state for months and was being paid off of another manager and teams performance with little impact on the outcome. Every day I woke up wondering if today was the day I would be fired or laid off and the confidence I hoped to get back being a new working parent was chipped away day after day after day. In Q2, teams were redistributed to give everyone a team and eliminate this strange limbo. While it was described as being geographically based - none of the people in the city I live in were reporting to me and I was only given one person on my team. I was being asked to go and hire five people and was given an annual quota as if I already had a full team. In looking at the situation, there was absolutely no way for me to be successful in this role long term. I also found out that the three peers that had been hired while I was out on maternity leave were making significantly more money than me and when I brought this up to management - I was told that they were given what was necessary to “bring in the right talent while I was away”, though no attention nor advocacy had gone into rightsizing my compensation while I was out on leave. All of these factors started to add up and feel like personal discrimination and constructive dismissal. This toxic, gaslighting, non validating environment was no longer beneficial to my mental health and I quit. Upon giving notice - after being an impactful member of the team for years - no one talked to me. I did find it strange that I remained on 10+ interviews after giving notice. Thankfully for Outreach - I was professional and remained above board - but it was certainly a very disingenuous and inauthentic experience to talk to potential hires about joining a company that I planned to leave. Aside from that, it was like I was on a professional timeout. HR sent an automated exit survey, however, never asked why I was leaving nor offered any sort of retention strategy. No skip level ever reached out. The final nail in the coffin was my boss scheduling a last day “send off toast” for me with our whole segment and then never showing up nor saying goodbye or anything at all to me on my last day. Frankly, the most bizarre behavior I have ever experienced in my professional career and I still can’t quite make sense of it. I am only sharing this experience for the sake of prospective parents in the hope it will be helpful. Having a child is hard enough without being gaslit, undervalued and disenfranchised at work.