Forrester Research Reviews in Boston, MA Area

Pros

Great Work-Life Balance, supportive mid-level managers, tons of smart people to learn from, opportunities for growth.

Cons

After the Jupiter-acquisition, the company seems to be having growing pains, and moving from a very client-focused business to a very profits-focused business.
Compared to other similar market research firms, it seems that Forrester tends to pay less competitively.

Advice to Senior Management

It seems like the upper management has lost some of the entrepreneurial vision that George Colony set out with; and are now just focused on squeezing dollars out of clients.
Also, the role-based model works -- but only to an extent -- they refuse to acknowledge that industry based research is also critical to the clients in conjunction with role based research

Pros

The people are great and I still am great friends with many of my former teammates. The fact that Forrester is also respected in the industry helps in terms of resume and network building. I was also able to interact with many clients and help solve their problems.

Cons

There is a lot of vagueness around promotions. They also blatantly mislead about pay and fairness in terms of compensation is non existent. Do not do many advanced analysis and it is basically survey crosstabs all day long.

Advice to Senior Management

Good place to get experience but longterm it is not a great company for a research career.

Pros

Forrester is a relatively small company that tries to foster an exciting and collegial environment for its younger employees.
The senior management goes out of its way to offer transparency in the company's strategy and performance, and it often does so with a great sense of humor and vitality.
There is always opportunity to take ownership of a special project, advance a new methodology, or own a process.

Cons

Forrester often thinks and tries to act like a billion dollar company, but its execution always resembles that of a small company. This translates to a constant state of very high expectations and few resources to realistically pull anything off well. This often trickles down to frustration as the worker bees must "make it work" and deal with tactical headaches.
Salaries are very low, especially for recent graduates and negotiation is not possible. The expectations for quality, volume, and turnaround of work are unreasonably high in my own experience, given the lack of compensation. In general, competent employees are overworked while others slide by.
The opportunity to take on more responsibility and do additional work is always available, but only if an employee is willing to work much much more than 40+ hours per week. In time, taking on more work is "rewarded" by a reset in manager expectations such that the overtime being put in (and not compensated for) is considered normal or the low bar.
Standards for promotion vary wildly for the same positions around the company, leading to some animosity among junior research staff. At times it seems some are rewarded because they market themselves, almost shamelessly, to get ahead.

Advice to Senior Management

Learn how to reward and retain your human capital. Forrester tends to only value two types of people: Analysts (the product) and Sales (the distribution). This mode of thinking causes you to forfeit up and coming talent in research and probably elsewhere. In general, Forrester rewards great employees by burning them out with too many demands and little acknowledgement.

Keep up the good work everywhere else. I know many people love working at Forrester.

Pros

Free access to the research :)

Cons

This is not a meritocracy. The mediocre and complacent are highly valued and rewarded while the best and brightest are reprimanded for questioning authority. Also, it doesn't pay terribly well, and the bonus schema is awful.

Advice to Senior Management

Stop rewarding incompetency.

Pros

+The people you work with. The research and sales people are top notch, not that management would notice.
+ The recognition you get in the industry. Almost everywhere I went and everywhere I have gone since, people knew the Forrester name.
+ Getting to learn about some of the really cool things that are happening in technology.

Cons

- The business model is changing and management seems to lack the foresight to understand that the syndicated research model is dying. Listen to some of your own research and analysts in the Web 2.0 space. Instead of trying to hold on to a dying model, reinvent the industry.
- Forrester recently laid off 5% of its work force in a quarter where they performed better than the year before and the company had over $200 Million in cash. Some of the people laid off were obviously hitting their targets and making clients happy, so it wasn't for performance or client reasons. It was simply a knee-jerk reaction that competitors had recently had layoffs, so the Street expected the same from Forrester. Forrester lost some really good people.
- The company is completely beholden to Wall Street and vendors, and is managed as such. Which means you focus Q to Q and be damned about any long term focus. The company would be in a much better position now if it were still a privately held.
- There are a lot of clueless middles and upper management who should not even be in management positions. Expect to be given lots of really stupid feedback and instructions.
- You are hired as an analyst but are really a consultant. As an analyst, you are told the most important thing is your research. The truth is that if you are not bringing in consulting revenue, expect to be shown the door.

Advice to Senior Management

+ Rethink your business model. Realize that Web 2.0 is killing your business and adjust.
+ Get rid of the multiple and unnecessary levels of management. They just screw things up and insulate you from the truth. There should only be one or two people between me and the CEO in such a small company, not 4+. If you would have reduced management, you could have retained the employees actually bringing in revenue instead of laying them off.
+ Share the wealth. Yes, the cash on the books belongs to the stockholders, but the CEO owns 35%+ of the stock. If you won't share it, take the company back private.

Pros

Working at Forrester means to work among Thought leaders of diverse Industries. You get to learn a lot from them.

Cons

New Employees have to shake hands with the owner in front of a video camera. Kind of awkward. Senior management isn't listening to suggestions.

Advice to Senior Management

Listen to your employees.

Pros

Forrester is a great name to have your resume. There are opportunities to learn, but you must take them on yourself.

Cons

If you are older than 28, be clear what you want!

Advice to Senior Management

Look to some of the experienced workers that are hired - they offer more than you believe!

Pros

Forrester has a great culture and a fun work environment. My colleagues in the research department are very smart and curious and I've learned a lot from them. The company name is well-respected in the industry. There is also a great work life balance, the hours are very reasonable and it's easy to find time to take a vacation.

Cons

The compensation is very low and if you get promoted during the year then you don't get the regular cost of living increase. Also they are very stingy with promotions, you have to be in your position for a year before they will consider you for a promotion or change of role. Management also seems very disconnected and development opportunities are sparse. If you started in Research at entry level you have no option to match your interests to research coverage, you get assigned and then get stuck. For a company that does technology research we have many internal systems that are desperately in need of an upgrade, processes that could be vastly improved, and they don't even support the iPhone!

Advice to Senior Management

Invest more in developing young talent. Hire managers who have management experience.

Pros

good people over all. opportunities to get into a lot of different projects and to grow skill sets. The company actually does love to hire from within - so that's a bonus for folks who want to climb.

Cons

we sometimes have a lack of direction. management decisions come out of nowhere, are poorly articulated, and are changed two or three times before they're implemented. And if they are implemented, dont think it's going to apply to everyone. A lot of better managers know how to get around all the crap. Roles are narrowly defined and don't' always match day to day expectations. Don't expect a reward for taking on added responsibilities.

Advice to Senior Management

If you really want quality - you need to invest in people; give them the tools they actually need to get the job done, and a reasonable amount of time to do it. enough with the firedrills.

Pros

Tons of smart, interesting people. They work very hard to screen out the knuckleheads, with a lot of success.

Cons

As a researcher, you are supposed to do three general things - research/publishing, respond to client "inquiries", and deliver consulting. In theory you need to do well in all three areas. In practice, developing and delivering consulting is really the most important way to ensure you long-term survival. in fairness, it is difficult to do this without doing the other two well, but the degree to which this is the case is not as clear as it should be.

Advice to Senior Management

The company IS very intelligently run, and they have made some very smart decisions. But each successful move seems to further insulate them from the rest of the organization - they "know" how everything works, so they rarely ask what is really going on. The "machine" works well, in part, because of the caliber of people you employ and the relationships they develop with clients. Remind them too often that you see it primarily as a "machine", and you will demotivate at your own peril.