Great Engineering Company, Horrendous Executive Leadership and Ownership - Anonymous employee SP6 Employee Review

Dear Former SP6 Sales Rep, Given that you shared with your manager that you posted this, this is an easy review to provide an honest reply. First, I’d like to thank you for post. This post does (2) things: 1. It recognizes both our engineering teams, and mid- and senior- leadership teams, for what they are: outstanding. Thank you for that. They absolutely deserve that recognition. 2. This review also allows me to provide context to the comments, as well as share with potential new team members what SP6 is all about. As a starting point, the mission of Glassdoor is “to help people everywhere find a job and company they love.” Glassdoor CEO Robert Hohman stated “How can we distill and assemble all that information in a constructive and fair way?” In the spirit of Hohman’s desire for “constructive and fair” information, my reply, which will provide context to this review, will be grounded in facts and data. Some people may find this level of transparency atypical, yet I think it’s necessary. The post was made by someone who: 1. Was a member of our sales team. 2. Was significantly under quota for several quarters in a row. 3. Had employment terminated. When I saw in late summer 2022 that this team member was struggling, we scheduled a meeting to help. The purpose of that meeting was simple: To ask questions, perform discovery, to see where this individual was off track and how we might get them on track. In a 2-hour conversation, these were the major take-aways: 1. This person admitted that for about a six-month period, their level of effort was 60%, while performing significantly below goal. 2. By far, this individual was one of the smartest people on the sales team. But, when asked, agreed that they were “unapplied talent”. 3. Not long after this meeting, this individual was placed on a Performance Improvement Plan (PIP), and eventually terminated. I’ve said many times to the sales team: • You can’t always control your results, but you can control your effort. • Hard work beats talent, every time talent doesn’t work hard. I also introduced the sales team to a leadership video from Alabama football coach Nick Saban. Saban said: “you’re allowed to make bad decisions; but you’re not allowed to make bad decisions when those decisions negatively affect other people.” This team member's lack of work ethic had the following negative downstream affects: • It lowered the quarterly bonuses paid to the (2) outstanding sales engineers who support the sales team (they are bonused on sales results). • It lowered the quarterly bonus to your Sales VP (who also gets paid on sales results). • It negatively affected the quarterly bonuses of our PS consultants, who are bonused on utilization. SP6 is a high-performance organization that requires the best from our people; particularly when each team members’ effort and performance have an impact on internal team members and external customers and partners. As I stated earlier in this reply, context to this post was required, and everything I offer here is based upon factual data and conversations that took place in the presence of several key leaders in our organization. To the 90%+ of the team members that give their all, I’d like to once again thank you. It’s your professionalism, passion, work ethic, collaboration and many other outstanding attributes that make SP6 what it is.