A Mediocre Support Organization
Pros
The support engineer job is pretty standard. You take cases from the queue and work them as needed. You'll mostly be figuring out what went wrong with Tableau but there are plenty of forays into networking, databases, authentication protocols, and so forth. If you like learning by digging into problems you'll have plenty of opportunities to do so. One of the best things about working at Tableau is that even though there is a queue, there is no incoming call/chat queue and you are encouraged to ignore customers who call you directly (if they can even figure out your direct number). There's not a lot of micromanagement to workflow - basically, work cases as you best see fit and take new cases when you're ready. Having come from different positions with an incoming call queue or positions with a hard requirement of X cases per Y hours this is a godsend. It's a pretty lax atmosphere so long as you get the job done and hit your metrics. Direct coworkers are awesome. There's not a single person who isn't willing to help and most everyone has a great sense of humor with good technical knowledge to boot. There's free snacks and drinks, a good amount of paid lunches, team events, etc. Direct managers are also pretty accommodating if you need to be out and for the most part they genuinely want to help you be successful. Health benefits are great. There's a commuter stipend as well which is nice but needs to increase to keep up with the parking prices in downtown Austin.
Cons
And while Tableau has a shiny veneer on the outside, the actual core of what would the any support organization great is lacking. Compensation is absolutely below market rate and management tries to spin the narrative that "we're not that far from the market". For the same or comparable positions, a large chunk of our premium and core support team has migrated to other companies for 20-40k more. This includes some of our best and brightest who for years demonstrated a huge level of effort and loyalty to the company. Some of our technical leads make less than incoming engineers. We also keep adding new features to the product without addressing glaring stability and administration issues (e.g. Tableau Server). There are bugs and issues that you'll encounter that will make you bang your head on your desk. Simply put, the product is not 'enterprise ready' and our biggest customers are painfully aware of it because they're the ones stumbling upon all sorts of odd issues. From a senior management/leadership perspective, any critiques are essentially discarded. Time and time again, a good portion of the support organization has attempted to discuss issues of poor compensation, penalties for loyalty (newly hired engineers will make more than engineers who have been with the company for years), and poor product releases. The critiques might be listened to and lip-service paid to them but leadership is still going to do whatever they have already decided. It's clear that a leadership is accepting the typical churn of a support organization and doesn't really care to address it. It's also clear that leadership would like to outsource part of the support organization given the chance. However, the product is too finicky and complex for this to be feasible. We've basically abandoned our core values for the most important de facto core value of any company which is "make more money". So while we have all the things that make Tableau look nice on the outside, the fundamental parts of what makes an organization great are decaying.
