Pros
- Company culture when I started in 2017 was fun, lively, social, and felt like a family. Some of the people still there (albeit not many left), still have these values. - Salary is decent if you do the minimum to keep your job (work 35ish hours per week). - If you have the chance to talk on research calls, you can learn a lot and get good experience.
Cons
Where to begin... the biggest negative I have is overall culture. Culture tanked in 2018. This can be attributed to a few things. 1) Failure to promote internally. I can count at least 10 times where a person worthy of promotion due to their hard work and impact on members was passed up for an external hire. And to make it worse, the person passed up for promotion HAD TO TRAIN the external hire, who can't actually be effective at the job until at least 6-9 months. 2) Hiring people that did not fit the culture of the company. Gartner switched to a big open-floor plan in the Rosslyn building, which is great if you like your coworkers and can work with noise. Not great if you do not like people talking on the phone for calls or chatting with people on their teams. A few hires were very anti-talking, causing the people around them to stop talking and basically make the place seem like high school detention. Fun events such as happy hour and team lunches went away almost entirely due to these people that seemingly did not want to be around others. 3) Practice leadership is extremely disconnected from the people who actually write the research. They are unfamiliar with how long tasks take, and refuse to take any action even when employees bring up issues in 1 on 1 meetings. On top of this, managers will promise work that lower level employees have to do, without knowing at all how much time things take. This wouldn't be an issue if compensation was higher, but it's not. This is not an Accenture or BCG, so stop trying to get that level of work out of your employees when you pay 30% less. There is a reason many good people leave to go work across the street at Deloitte - same level of expected work, but more pay. 4) Failure to compensate good talent. Gartner has lost a ton of good people over the last 6 months, primarily because they were overworked, underappreciated and under-compensated. Management seemed to have criteria for promotion that they did not share with lower level employees, making it a crap-shoot on whether or not you would get a promotion. There is a different timeline depending on what practice you work in for when you can be promoted – which is just silly. Promote people that can do the job – not that have been there long. That makes no sense. Why have your best talent doing work that an intern can do? On top of that, being promoted requires your manager to basically defend you against any critics, which scares many managers off from trying to promote you. 5) Unequal compensation. This is sort of an add-on to above, but you can show up at 9am, take an hour lunch, and leave at 5pm and you will get compensated the exact same as someone that comes in at 7:45am, works through lunch, takes on extra tasks, and stays late. Clearly one of these employees tries harder and cares more about their impact - yet management does not recognize this. Again, adds to the frustration and takes away any motivation to work hard or go the extra mile. 6) Silly working from home policies. When I started, my first manager (I had 3 in 2 years...) told me working from home is completely okay as long as I get my work done. What he/she did not tell me is not all managers have the same policy. My second manager told me not to work from home because "I needed to be in the office to get my work done". I get it - a lot of older people still think that if you are not at work, you are not working. Wake up. It's 2019, and working from home has so many positives. For starters, the company wouldn't have to spend millions each year on rent for that massive building. Many people are also more productive from home. It's easier to work without distractions, and I end up actually working more since I am way more comfortable. This isn't just a Gartner problem, but they can be a part of the solution. The bigger issue is inconsistent standards which managers need to discuss and figure out.
