Gartner Reviews

Pros

Work life balance is key at Gartner and a major reason people work for the company. Much of the work in many positions can be done remotely and you can manage your time.

Cons

Being virtual means you have to work harder to be visible to management for promotions.
Being publicly held drives occasional short-term thinking.
Many people come here after gathering training/experience elsewhere, so you have to work harder for professional development outside of the job.

Advice to Senior Management

Invest more in professional development. Recent emphasis is nice to hear, but follow through with more ongoing opportunities. This is as important as charity match.

Pros

For analysts: challenging and diverse work, opportunity to learn, interesting colleagues and clients, good company ethics, politics are fairly minimal.

Cons

There is a fairly heavy workload, with an abundance of (not always meaningful) metrics about that workload. This isn't a good place for someone not adapted to a complex business model.

Advice to Senior Management

Slightly more emphasis on common sense over metrics would be helpful. Make it easier to address issues that cross functional boundaries (such as the web site).

Pros

Intellectually stimulating, prestigious company to work for – the leader in its field. Travel opportunities worldwide, and there’s the ability to actually live abroad on assignment. Supports remote/at home work. Wide range of internal opportunities. Compensation/benefits are good overall.

Cons

Systems long overdue for revamping. Middle management poorly prepared with layers and layers and layers of people given various responsibilities for various aspects of the business setting up internal conflicts. Policies introduced then either disregarded or updated – can’t find accurate information internally. New programs constantly introduced, few retired. New hires may find themselves sacrificed to protect entrenched employees. Workforce becoming more heads down rather than dynamic due to constant pressure to do more. Speaking out can make you a pariah. Work/Life balance given lip service; in order to succeed, must work like a banshee.

Advice to Senior Management

Leadership needs a new mantra; the old one is stale. Employee recognition programs need revamping – good talent is leaving in frustration over not feeling appreciated. “Do as I say – because I say so” culture works against having happy staffers.

Pros

Great collaborative atmosphere with consummate professionals.

Cons

Too many clearances to progress on a project

Advice to Senior Management

more communication

Pros

You work with really smart people and for the most part people really care about the quality of their work. Gartner influences billions of dollars in enterprise IT spend and because of this, you have access to the senior leadership of some of the best companies in the world. Overall, it is a positive environment.

Cons

As an AE, you have very few accounts and the preformance, size and industry of those accounts is not taken into consideration when your quota is set. Quotas do not seem to be based upon any sort of analsys of territories.

Advice to Senior Management

Keep up the good work! Gartner has it's critics, but companies keep on buying. Until there is a revolt, hold your prices and keep adding shareholder value.

Pros

Great people, good resources, respected product.

Cons

Too much of a focus on performance metrics, creating products sales can sell rather than research clients need.

Advice to Senior Management

Go back and focus on quality and excellence rather than quantity and operational efficiency.

Pros

Large company with many places to go; unfortunately, there's no where to go in Boston. Fort Meyers or Stamford is where to be

Cons

No where to advance to. They love the people who have been with gartner 10+ years. musy stay to gather benefits

Advice to Senior Management

get better managers in boston who want to make the boston a hub of the company. beautiful offices.

Pros

Solid senior leadership, great training and the absolute best IT research team in the industry. The entire research team is client focused and very supportive of the sales organization. Extensive global reach and growth potential.

Cons

1) As the #1 IT research firm in the world, one would think Gartner would practice what they preach. The latest sales CRM system took over a year to implement and it is difficult to use, not intuitive, and the data base installed was not accurate and outdated. To do a simple forecast or change a sales forecast could take ten steps. Sales leaders that insist sales people put in all of their activity and continually update information lose 6 - 8 hours of sales productivity a week. BI which is a leading IT topic is weak and a poor example of what is preached. A large percentage of the company works on embaressingly outdated Microsoft Office Products. Large clients would be shocked.

2) There is an overall attitude in the company that Gartner know best on how everything should be done. There is a closed middle and upper management team that does not have an environment where top industry sales and operations leaders can join the company and succeed. There is a closed club that limits innovation and growth. This is especially relevant in sales; however, not at all relevant in the research group.

3) Sales leadership is the weakest link at Gartner. Top sales execs come into the company from around the globe because of the brand and the quality of the products. They are welcomed in and receive top notch initial training. However, the next two levels of sales management are very weak especially when compared to other top brand product leaders. As stated above, sales leaders almost always come from within and have very limited sales leadership skill sets. Next level leaders are promoted because of their Gartner experience and continue the closed environment that discourages fresh new ideas and perspective. What happens is a sales leadership team with limited skills sets in their primary role: sales leadership. They know Gartner, processes and people, so it is easier to slot someone in internally rather than add quality people and train them. With that, there is high turnover in new sales people and because of the limited skill sets of many of the sales leaders, there is a merry go round of sales changes.

4) From a business perspective the company is very well run and the key Gartner business leaders understand how to grow the company and maximize shareholder investment. The sales leadership does not seem to understand how to run a P & L and their idea of growing sales is to hire more people. This is certainly one way to grow sales, but at what bottom line expense. The most strategic and important sales group at Gartner, has hired droves of sales reps., managers etc. The salaries, ramp up packages and training costs are huge. Leadership has authorized and approved this expansion but the overall results YTD are a disaster. Some of the worst performance in Gartner sales history or any sales history is taking place in what should be the premier part of the sales organization. Growth numbers in single digits are unheard of. Plans to get to get close to 50% sales growth is unacceptable. This is a classic example of what has been reviewed above.

Advice to Senior Management

1) Practice what you preach. How can Gartner advise and consult on how Global 1000 firms should role out new initiatives and software products and they cannot implement and manage their own?
2) Take a hard look at the sales teams and especially management to review all aspects of their background and performance. Learn how other leading organizations evaluate their sales leaders.
3) Teach all sales leaders how to run and manage a profitable organization.
4) Don't be satisfied with the current level of success and growth. Still a room for improvement.

Pros

- Strong brand in information technology
- Global presence and network
- Intellectually stimulating (depending on the role)
- High paced environment

Cons

- Politics are essential for advancement
- Weak middle management
- Many important analysts recently left
- Doesn't practice what you preach
- Not truly independent
- Lots of micromanagement
- Incentive structure stimulates unethical practices
- Sales driven

Advice to Senior Management

Gartner should align the incentive structure with companies long term goals. Gartner's sales force grows faster then Gartner's product which currently undermines the quality of the product.

Pros

It has only upward growth potential. They are hiring when other companies have not for months.
There are great opportunities to move into other departments and higher job roles, especially if you nurture internal connections.

Cons

In some business units, the middle management has been unstructured and haphazard, leaving many employees unfortunately adrift in the otherwise great sea of opportunities noted above. If you are not in the right group you can be invisible to anyone who can recognize that your talents should be rewarded. In these cases, you have to try to get involved in any project that allows you to work with people outside your team.

Advice to Senior Management

Gartner's top managers need to better evaluate and analyze the performance of their middle managers, not from a narrow company ROI or profit perspective, but from the perspective of improving the success of those teams. Rewarding talent by placing quality candidates in more important roles will serve the company as much as it serves the employees. There has been significant improvement here recently.