Bad management, effective sales training & process, poor culture
Pros
-World-class Training --The Training is world-class. I've been in several organization and never have I received training like at Gartner. Be careful though, you have to do well or they will fire you before training is over. In my academy class, they fired 5 people before graduating from training. -Great Retention and Prospecting best practices -Gartner looks great on your resume to other Tech companies -IT research and working with analyst community --Gartner allows you to work with some of the brightest minds in IT, the analyst community. Take advantage of a free username and password to the Gartner research portal. You can read the same research and listen to calls that CIO's, CMO's and other C-levels pay thousands of dollars for. I read our Tech Go-to-Market research that was aimed for CMO's and it helped me with the job a ton. -Team atmosphere --Working with my team was the best part about my job. My manager rarely helped my team develop, but the senior AE's on my team were directly responsible for my success at Gartner. Everyone on my team cared about the next person and wanted them to do well. -The Value is there --There is a ton of value our services can bring our clients. It's truly a valuable service that most of our clients renew, if they are using the service. It's learning how to educate your client's on how to use the service properly. -Overall, great first job. --If you can get through the con list below, I would strongly recommend giving this place a shot for your first job.
Cons
-No Diversity --There is one kind of person that fits in well for Gartner: Male, White, Jock/Bro, Unintelligent usually. Conversations at work consist of topics high school bros talk about. Very few females or people of other races. -Management --You'll find out that Gartner is big on values. One of the values corporate tries to push on us is "unlimited potential". So, you'll see many promotions during your time at Gartner. Unfortunately, many of those promotions are not deserving. Politics play a huge role. I've seen highly qualified candidates go for management, but they didn't get the job because a Vice President didn't like them. All the while, I've seen peers of mine promoted because they are close with a VP. There is no consistency in our hiring process. -Not real sales, all about luck. --Many AE's on the floor find themselves walking into large thousand-dollar deals. For example, someone on a team closed a $110,000 deal after being live on the floor for only two weeks. How did they close that deal you ask? They closed it because their manager gave them that prospect. That prospect had been in a previous sales cycle with an AE who left the company. That previous AE did a great job showing them value of Gartner, but because the new AE had the account now, he/she got the credit and closed the deal. Unfortunately, they have been receiving praise now for months because of that deal. Typically, AE's who sell the most get promotions. So you can see how that is skewed. -Propaganda, useless company meetings --Your calendar will quickly get filled up with invites from your managers, VP's and other leadership staff. They will attempt to manage your calendar for you, all the way down to every cold-call you make. If you like reviewing every email you send with your manager, before you send it, then this company is for you. -Chained to desk and the office --Don't be fooled by all the conference rooms in the office because you can't actually go in them. Managers want you at your desks at all time during the day. If you are gone for 10 minutes, your manager is texting you asking where you are at. The VP's boast about our work-from-home policy, but those are never awarded. Vacation time during Thanksgiving and the Holiday is almost impossible, because Q4 is our biggest quarter so they require all staff to be in the office until the books close at midnight on December 31st. Goodbye New Year's Even plans. -The longer you work for them, the more you find out and the less you like it --I loved Gartner at first. I loved my managers and my VP's. It was only a matter of time until I started to despise coming to work. I found out that all the values and propaganda that our leadership pushes down your throat are only fake. If you don't jive with their system, they will let you go without helping you first.
