Pros
The people at Gartner are truly amazing. Everyone you meet is honest, genuine, caring, extremely smart, and they go the extra mile to help you out. People not only want to be successful but they want to help their friends and co-workers get there too. For someone who is older and looking for a better work life balance Gartner is the place for you. You will never get promoted or make more money but if you come into the company making a decent wage and do good work you never have to worry about being fired and do have the opportunity to not work weekends or too late on the weekdays. Research is a great opportunity for individuals to be true thought leaders and speak and influence an entire industry. Sales is a great place where the goals are attainable and you can make a lot of money if you’re driven (though the territories are shrinking). The Gartner name does look great on a resume and the benefits are great.
Cons
People think of Gartner as a technology company and probably envision and dream of a company with a startup feel. Gartner; however, is more of a publishing company and all business. Gartner has a tremendous amount of multiple non-sense layers of leadership and corporate politics that you would see in any big company. They are very slow to adapt, change, and grow. There is absolutely ZERO and I mean ZERO path for growth. Gartner’s main goal is to keep you in the same role for as long as they can and work and get the most out of you while not giving you any more money. Which in their defense is what most public companies do who bow to the shareholders. I truly feel that Gartner’s mission is, “How can we give this person more, so they can take on and do more, but get paid the same or less.” The company USED to have an even better and livelier culture and work balance. However, recently the mission has been all about how can we get more and more out of our employees and squeeze even more productivity out of them. The best employees at Gartner who are younger will inevitable point in which they are crushing their numbers, goals, figures, and be thought of as a leader. They will be given more and more tasks and be seen as a leader. However, they will simply be tired of getting 2-3% raises every year and go to another job and get a big pay day. Compensation is very poor compared to other major companies out there. Some are OK because they trade it in for work life balance for the majority of others they leave and get a big time pay day.