Talkdesk Reviews

Pros

Great leadership team, great opportunities, the leading contact center platform for our innovative solution and new features added consistently, very passionate and hard-working employees

Cons

No 401k match but everything else is great

Advice to Management

Keep empowering and enabling your employees - the opportunities are fantastic!

Pros

The best reason to work at Talkdesk is that you need a job. There are a few bright spots at the company - Sales Ops was run (until very recently) by an awesome VP of Operations and a team of very helpful, very knowledgeable folks who would bend over backward to help you. Lots of the sales folks and SDRs are awesome too, just good people who put in tons of effort and heart even when they get no thanks. The... Information Security team, especially the Director of Security, go out of their way to help the sales folks who need it.

Cons

The company culture is extremely toxic and is only getting worse. I joined Talkdesk with high hopes. Shortly after joining I learned that the departments are very fragmented/siloed. The CEO, Tiago Paiva, micro-manages decisions throughout the company and will shoot things down for random reasons. Many managers are afraid to speak up to Tiago because he has a quick temper and flies off the handle any time he feels... like his "authority" is challenged. As a result, there's a constant effort to manage him and his perception of what's happening, with predictable results. His attitude has probably contributed the most to the steady stream of executives and senior leaders who have left over the last year (several in the last couple of months). If you're in sales, the management is inconsistent. There are some great leaders still on the sales teams, but going to the deal desk for help with a tricky sale is a game of Russian roulette. Tiago rules the roost there too but you're just as likely to get shot down by some flunky in the finance department who doesn't have a clue how to actually close a sale. Benefits are on the low side of average, the company doesn't match 401k (somebody kept asking about it at every all-hands meeting a while ago, but that stopped all of a sudden), and the stock option offers are just stupid. But hey, you can bring your cute widdle puppy to work and all the recruiting team will oooh and aaah over it.

Advice to Management

Get a CEO who actually has a clue how to run a company. Fire your finance team and find someone who will support your sales teams. Start encouraging candid feedback from your employees and help them make good decisions instead of decisions that won't make Tiago mad. Treat your employees like adults instead of idiot children.

Pros

At Talkdesk you'll find a good environment and friendly colleagues.

Cons

Not the most innovative company. They are pushing forward to be the same as the top contenders even if the product doesn't make sense.

Advice to Management

When it comes to hiring don't be afraid of hiring people without call center experience but instead people that are good at what they do. They'll work to achieve the best product and not what everyone else is doing

Pros

Growth potential. Awesome people and product to work with.

Cons

Health benefits if you have a family. Executive team infrastructure. Too many direct reports into CEO and other orgs. Could change tho as they go through this stage of hyper-growth

Advice to Management

Better health benefits (affordability) and find bigger office space for the team in Lehi

Pros

This is an amazing company full of amazing people. It has changed a lot over the years and right now it's the best place I have ever worked. Keep it going!

Cons

Even after a big round we still don't have all the perks that other companies in SF have. Not much has changed spending wise to be honest. I expected some more after the round.

Advice to Management

Invest more in the office in SF. All the other offices are amazing and the SF one has not changed.

Pros

Awesome work/life balance and super flexible... they get it. The pay is above average for the area. The culture is genuinely to the core instead of surface level, which honestly is the most important thing to me. The opportunity for growth is unbelievable. There are no empty promises when it comes to career path and guidance. The pace of innovation here is more intense than I have ever seen in tech space... We just raised $100 million in funding.. so...

Cons

There always seems to be urgency, which can be good in the sense that you work your butt off, but sometimes super stressful. They could put more money back into their employees when it comes to promoting Talkdesk (nice swag, offsites, office space and desks, etc)

Pros

This is a startup with good investment and big ambition. They have an aggressive plan to build the best CCAAS platform on the planet and if they execute well, they probably will.

Cons

Right now Talkdesk has limited differentiation in a very crowded market. Talkdesk was built as a mid market product and is struggling to break into Enterprise, a tough play in a mature market. The product does not yet have the feature set or market awareness to get traction in Enterprise accounts and is unheard of in EMEA.

Advice to Management

Invest more in establishing a well managed, high performance SDR team in EMEA. You hire experienced AEs at great expense, then micro manage them to a ridiculous level rather than trust in their abilities to get the job done or ask for any input or opinion. Be a bit more like Steve Jobs.

Pros

Incredible culture lead by an enthusiastic and supportive management team. This is one of those unicorn jobs with a company that is about to explode plus the teams and culture make it so much fun.

Cons

Be ready to run! This a fast moving environment and sometimes you need to take it upon yourself to make sure things get done.

Advice to Management

Keep the culture consistent. Talented people want to be part of Talkdesk because of the insanely cool culture. Please do not lose that magic.