Positive work culture, but remote work feels isolating - Associate Software Engineer Sprout Social Employee Review

This is the best company culture, and I think everything else flows from it: the possibility of new projects, the work-life balance, the benefits. Sprout invests in its people, from generous PTO and company-wide R&R Days to meeting-free focus days. The benefits package is pretty comprehensive including medical, vision and dental plans, 16 weeks of paid parental leave for all parents, a 401(k) with company match, ESPP, and real remote work (you receive a stipends for your home office) with joining the whole team in Chicago a couple times a year. On the growth side, feedback is both expected and encouraged, informally and formally. I've been really happy here.

Compensation does trend below market average for the industry, but personally, the overall benefits package and culture help offset that.

Truly a remote-first company. Work/Life balance is usually excellent, with unlimited PTO. You get to work with some incredible, smart people who are excellent at their roles. The top performers tend to find each other and work together to get things done (despite chaos above).

Over the last 2 years, it’s been so sad to see this company’s once exceptionally strong culture dissolve. Marketing is absolutely dysfunctional and working out of sync with product development. They made the decision to begin marketing Sprout as a “social intelligence platform” under the assumption that this would be creating a brand new SaaS product category. However, there was a lack of research into this category and the associated risks/challenges. A main competitor had already been marketing under that label for almost a year, but now leadership thinks anytime they mention “social intelligence,” it’s a response to us or a sign that they’re worried. Not true. They beat us with that label. This is the sort of rose-colored glasses opinion that causes blind spots in our strategy. Leadership only wants to hear good things about how their strategy is going and anyone who points to data that says otherwise gets ignored or silenced. Senior Marketing Leadership is not aligned on anything except for the fact that they work at a company named Sprout Social. Each individual VP only cares about their own focus areas and impact rather than the big picture (of driving awareness and adoption of the product), and this leads to multiple ICs working in conflict on the same projects who are aligned to their VP’s desired outcome, but the VPs are not aligned on what the outcomes should be. The morale on Marketing is in the gutter following the pivot to social intelligence. People who were once highly passionate and energized about making a difference are exhausted from the whiplash created by senior leadership. Several team members have just left with no job lined up because they couldn’t take the dysfunctional environment anymore. Our prospects and customers can also see this in the output of disjointed messaging and priorities.