Dismal, Discouraging, Disheartening and Disappointing - Senior Sales Engineer MicroStrategy Employee Review

1.0
5 Jan 2012
Recommend
CEO approval
Business outlook

Pros

Sharp teammates, hard working and supportive. Commissions are based on individual quota attainment which great if you're a veteran and know how to play politics to work with the best sales reps and work best accounts.

Cons

It states, "20 word minimum" to make it on the glassdoor site? Is there a maximum? Dismal - From the beginning, you are required to pass a grueling 7-week company mandated technical indoctrination or else you are terminated immediately. This is by far one of the worst experiences a professional could ever endure in their career. Unless you're already a MicroStrategy expert from day one the entire process is excruciatingly stressful and menacing to say the least. Personally eye witnessed several people getting fired for failing. They don't care about your livelihood, period. "Didn't you read your work contract?" Discouraging - There is an excess of obligatory policies and procedures outside of your core job function impeding your vocational effectiveness to the organization. These range from logging work hours on a weekly basis to expense submissions that take forever to be reimbursed in full. Minutia is encouraged. They don't care if you have to work overtime, nights and weekends. Just make sure you log all those hours. Disheartening - the salary is. Commissions based on individual quota attainment can be financially devastating for new hires. It's politics as usual where old-timers get to have their cake and eat it too and even if your personal contributions help teams reach 300% of quota, you aren't rewarded unless you're directly assigned to a named opportunity. As a result, you can have many quarters without receiving a single commission. This can introduce a hostile environment where sales engineers are bickering over how much they should deserve over another when a split is finally necessary. Good luck trying to reach an unattainable OTE with that type of commission structure. Disappointing - Last but definitely not least is the founder Michael Saylor himself who still remains at the helm, ruling the company like a dictatorship. Every business process approval gets kicked up to him. Yes, even your own performance reviews and weekly timesheet entries. Everyone must adhere to his ways and his ideas no matter how preposterous they are. If that means sacrificing the company's core competency for something that doesn't make much business sense, then so be it. I'm convinced others will add much more.

Explore other reviews about MicroStrategy

5.0
30 Jul 2025
Recommend
CEO approval
Business outlook

Pros

Good pay and benefit. Great support for immigration and legal. Great work life balance. Supportive and talented co-workers

Cons

No management level issues at least in my team.

3.0
14 Jun 2026
Recommend
CEO approval
Business outlook

Pros

You will learn ALOT here and if you can stomach the culture you can get promoted quickly or move teams with little friction. Above market rate benefits that start Day 1 Generally speaking good camaraderie amongst the worker ranks I’ve held multiple roles and have appreciated the opportunities to travel internationally which was life changing The product has a little bit of a learning curve but it genuinely is something special once it’s up and running I felt that towards the end of my tenure my pay was exemplary although I really had to earn it

Cons

Wowwwww where to begin… Well it’s a top down organisation but also a market laggard. Given our position relative to our competitors this regime of leadership is responsible for missing the moment in Cloud, BI and AI. Middle management and upper management alike don’t have a clue and it’s definitely a soap opera of leadership and empire or cult building. Not a great feeling of purpose when everything you do internally as well as with customers is overshadowed by Bitcoin. Dwindling customer base. We’re really only making money by replacing ironically technologies older than us (Cognos,BOBJ) or moving existing customers to our managed cloud The community is totally dead especially internationally. Minimal on the ground experts at strategy and a very loose and underfunded partner program Product conceptually is great but struggles to differentiate from hyperscalers and modern cloud data platforms on value. Leadership can definitely get a little preachy touting merits or metrics that are pretty vain in the big picture Specifically in the last 3 years gaslighting has been the norm for management. Everything here feels performative and doing your best to do your work without upstaging or upsetting your manager. The RSU distribution definitely feels like serfdom. The employees at the bottom get a single digit or if you’re a heretic you get double digit number of RSUs, but it definitely does not seem fair that the benefits of the Bitcoin strategy rolled to the top, at least when the asset is up

2
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