Forrester Research Reviews in Boston, MA Area

Pros

Many bright, hard-working employees
Terrific resume builder
Praise for job well done
Quarterly bonus program
Great sales team
Operates with integrity toward clients

Cons

More concerned with consulting revenue rather than thought leadership or quality
Insular leadership team
No common sense of mission or vision
Competition between and within teams
Strong drive to do more with less and increase margin at expense of company's values
Mediocre technology
Frequently poor work/life balance

Advice to Senior Management

Revisit the core values and deeply consider if the priorities, company communications, structure and compensation support these values. Engage employees more--you trust them to consult with business leaders at accounts, so they should be good enough to engage for Forrester's own vision and strategies. Recruit fresh blood in leadership (and really consider what each leader has accomplished in the last year or two--there are some who have lost the faith of their reports).

Pros

Work life balance is good

Cons

The company has fallen in love with itself, and lost touch with clients needs. The strategic direction is limited and unstable. They need to hire managers, and not promote high individual performers

Advice to Senior Management

Bring in outside, proven leaders for senior management

Pros

Fun place to work, social environment. Nature of work can be rewarding and intellectually stimulating. Employees are smart and energetic. Collaborative work environment. Commitment to high quality. Constantly evolving to adapt to changing client needs.

Cons

Top heavy with too many managers at the upper levels. Becoming more and more "political."

Advice to Senior Management

None

Pros

flexible - can work from home, make your own hours; interesting work; high profile with perks of the job including top treatment from vendors

Cons

Too much emphasis for analysts to sell themselves and meet consulting numbers; not enough time or resources devoted to actually doing research; create unneccessary stress and overlook contributions that don't tie back to consulting like high volume of inquiries, meeting publishing deadlines and writing quality research, media presence - none of that seems to matter. Treated like a widget instead of an individual - and there's way too much middle management; For a tech company systems seem outdate - Windows XP, IE6

Advice to Senior Management

Recognize that analysts bring different skills and backgrounds to the role - it's all about numbers - Many in senior management have been here too long, need outside perspective, not enough research leadership - analyst role driven to sell clouds objectivity; client groups create barriers to collaboration and roles have gone too far - overlooks that not everything maps neatly into a single role

Pros

If you dedicate your life to work while at Forrester, you can really build your own professional equity within the industry. You have ample opportunities to learn from others and connect to top people at Global 2000 companies. You can either be a 'lifer' at Forrester and stay and grow in the analyst industry, or after a few years at Forrester have your choice of senior/executive level opportunities at top companies that you worked closely with as an analyst.

The ramp-up training is really, really good, though very intense.

Cons

Tough grind and ramp-up for people new to the analyst world. You have be able to find your rhythm quickly, doing research, consulting, presenting, and working with customer calls each day. At times it seems those responsibilities are in direct conflict with each other. They have aggressive quotas for each area, and you must course-correct quickly or they'll show you the door -- admittedly they do their best to to help you get back on track.

Advice to Senior Management

Analysts and research groups need to be encouraged and incentivized to work more collaboratively, combining ideas from team members to synthesize better research. Also, analysts should be allowed more flexibility in balancing their quotas to suit their abilities (more research, less consulting, etc.)

Company-wise, Forrester has a great administrative and technology infrastructure to support the analysts.

Pros

Very smart people. Motivated and performance driven.

Cons

Way too much work for the pay scale. The analyst role is two full time jobs as a researcher and billable consultant.

Advice to Senior Management

Change compensation, incentives and controls so analysts don't get burnt out.

Pros

Good company culture and people. Great place to get exposure to multiple industries, topics, analysts, marketing research, marketing techniques, Fortune 500 clients, and contacts.

Cons

- Limited growth and career opportunities.
- Path to promotions is sketchy at best and never clear.
- Senior Management tends to live in their own world and never practice what they preach.
- Unless you get hired from the outside to a certain position, the only way to grow , get promoted, or get into other roles are if people leave or move elsewhere within the company (which isn't very often).
- A lot of managers (including senior management) aren't qualified to run the company and often have convoluted and opposing strategies.
- Your ideas will likely be ignored unless someone in a management or principal analyst position comes up with it.
- If you save the company millions or save a million dollar account or two, the company won't care because according to them, "you are just doing the job you were hired to do".

Advice to Senior Management

Senior Management is always praising the talent at the company. However, they overwork their talent and offer little reward for doing an outstanding job with clients (including saving million dollar accounts). While benefits are good, employees are severely underpaid (especially if you are in lower level positions). Because of this, Forrester has lost a good number of talented individuals over the last 3 years alone. Forrester hires extremely talented and capable individuals at ALL levels. You should listen to all of them rather than just the usual suspects.

Pros

Good place to build a reputation and learn. People are smart. Good place to practice learning to give speeches and talk your game.

Cons

While people are smart, workload is so high, no time to talk to each other much less collaborate. You'll spend most of your day on the phone. Then have to spend your evenings and weekends doing the client work. Take the vacation because you'll need it to keep going.

Advice to Senior Management

Create a culture that is interested in feedback and don't shoot the messengers. Be open to change and follow through on the changes-- make them real. Don't fall behind when the firm is supposed to be made up of thought leaders.

Pros

Great people; good benefits; Excellent exposure to blue chip clients.

Cons

Poor work life balance. Management been in place too long and have their own agenda. many managers are now ill-equipped to take the company to the next level. Many of the management team don't understand the research business. this is particularly bad if you are a research compant.

Advice to Senior Management

Avoid nepotism. Recognize that employees are shareholders too.

Pros

Forrester provides a lot of resources to help develop your professional career. At Forrester your exposed to a immense amount of knowledge and expertise that you do not find most places.

Cons

Forrester runs very lean so it is difficult to make for decisions to be made because senior management is always unavailable.

Advice to Senior Management

Consistency is key. It was difficult to understand the focus and the direction of the company when the message kept changing.