Gartner Reviews

Cons

It's a keep up or fall down culture- you should enjoy spending your time between standing on your toes and flying in mid-air.

Cons

1) Lack of formal on-boarding process
- there wasn’t really a formal process. If you’re not very proactive then your learning curve and adaption pangs might vary. You also need to reach out to people yourself, but again, everyone is really nice about it. Disclaimer: this only speaks to my role. I’ve heard that there’s a very formal on-boarding program for the sales side.
2) Huge part of your experience is decided by manager
- continuing the theme of lack of formal structure, a huge part of your experience will be determined by your boss. Again, there’s no “mean” people that I’ve come across so far. But I’ve been personally blessed with an amazing manager/mentor and I’ve seen some colleagues who don’t get as much coaching as I do. I’ve also heard that some managers keep their relationship at the purely professional level and don’t try to relate to the people under them in a social manner. Some may prefer this.
3) Compensation slightly below market
Gartner, as a research + advisory firm, when compared to other jobs in consulting or advisory, pays below market. But when compared to other corporate jobs, its above average. But to be fair, I work +\- 60 hours a week and I know other consultants can work up to 80+ hour weeks. So in that sense, it is fair. However, if I do want to take on more initiatives and push myself harder into that 70+ hour week range, then there’s really zero incentive for me in terms of compensation.

Cons

Huge problem developing people. Academy is a process that is 2+ months long. After going through many interviews, flying around the country, and going through 2+ months of training's, you still might not be a good fit. A lot of people move just for this job, and they do not even know if they will make it through training and a lot of people don't.

Management is a problem, be careful of the bait and switch. In your interview process you will meet with VP and successful members of management, which is who determines if you get the job. However, that will more than likely be your last exposure with them, which I did not realize. When you come out of the Academy, you are going to be at random assigned a manager and a team. You have no control over the types of people or manager you have to report to. My experience was awful, I walked into a team that hated their manager. My mentor was going to quit unless the manager left soon, and 4 of the 7 people on my team left recently because of management issues. I walked into a less than desirable situation and I could do nothing about it.

Many people say people don't quit companies, they quit managers. This is certainly the case at Gartner. The turnover is tremendously high, they will downplay this hard, and many of my peers asked the same questions I did, and you will just feel that they are not being honest. They will want to pitch you and say that it is promotions, don't let them lie to you. Within my first year every person that sat next to me or on other teams around me had changed. Out of the 10-15 people close to me that left, 1 was promoted. They will force a lot of people out, they dont fire, but they put extensive pressure, and it happens a lot.

The problem really is not bad quality candidates or poor training. It is the lack of management. The majority of the managers are rookie managers who are not experienced with people development. Many are under the age of 30, and they simply lack experience of being leaders, they focus solely on being managers and managing numbers.

This is a dial for dollars job. Call Call Call, this is a call center. No matter how much they try to make it look cool or edgy, you need to be very clear on expectations, because the real job is to consistently cold call. The territories have been consistently shrinking has they are bringing in more and more sales people. The list of companies you get to prospect has been contacted many many times, in fact the company is now even switching prospect lists quarterly, so every quarter a new sales rep is reaching out trying to get a sale, which can make for tough cold call sessions and blitz days. The only way to come over that, is to find new start up companies to target, the challenge there is those companies are seeking funding, and you are asking them to spend more money then what they have in hope we can get them help with funding.

On top of switching your prospects, you may have to switch territories often as well. This is not a job where you have a specific territory and you develop and build relationships with people. You have to call and try to get the deal right away. When you do switch prospects or territories you have a few weeks at best to close anything that is already in the works. The problem is often you will get people to reach out to you months later when they are ready. Many sales jobs that is ideal as your efforts eventually pay off, but at Gartner, they are no longer your prospect and you do not get any rights at all to get that business, even if they ask for you it is a battle to get the business to fall your way.

You wont have any good tools for CRM or LMS. Tracking prospects or notes is not going to happen, everything is done via personal notes, which your not going to get once they become your prospect.

You must have spirit to work here. There are so many dress up days and theme days, you must dress up much like high school very regularly to have "spirit" weeks.

Do not get use to your team, change happens so much. There are a few sales employees who have tenure, but not very many at all. In fact many of the people who you will meet with tenure actually had most of that tenure in another role in the company, usually CP, the sales channel does not have that much success keeping people long term.

There are a lot of uncontrollables at this company. Your manager, your team, your territory, your book of business......all of that is something you have no say or control over. All of it impacts your income and longevity with the company.

You should not talk to upper management. When you get out of training, I was told by a lot of people on the floor that you should not talk with upper management on issues. Upper management is great to have fun with and interact with personally, but you should not have business issues discussed with them. Two times I had issues where I had a specific game plan to obtain a business deal, both these times my direct manager told me not to go with my game plan and go with hers instead. Both times her game plan did not work. So when I talked to upper management about the situation he suggested something different, which was the exact plan that I had in the first place, I asked him then how I could better communicate with my manager so we could have avoided this. That was a mistake on my part as that rocked the boat and made for a uncomfortable situation. Both of those examples I was able to save the business, and I felt I should absolutely be able to have a strategic conversation with my VP to better communicate with my brand new manager. But as all of my senior peers advised, don't go to management unless it is a massive huge problem or they ask you in to talk, just don't do it.

Cons

Lack of company culture, too corporate.

Cons

Getting big fast and the little guy can get left behind
Lost the sense of family

Cons

Limited growth, product and territory alignment can be confusing

Cons

I did not see any cons

Cons

Favoritism and cult like atmosphere

Cons

Nothing that comes to mind

Cons

Some of the days can end up feeling pretty long