Pros
The brand on your CV enables you to get a fantastic job in the outside world (vendor community). For this reason it is worth joining but hold on to your hat ...
Cons
The Gartner culture is the complete antithesis of the public image. When I joined I was expecting a high-brow, sophisticated organisation where the sales culture was thoughtful and strategically focused on building long term relationships with Clients. Instead I found an immature, aggressive, stack ranking culture 100% focused on the numbers at whatever cost. Managers are promoted from within which provides a very insular view of the outside world. Whilst the onboarding training is fabulous it is then re-enforced in such an aggressive fashion you start to resent (I would go almost as far to say hate) the concepts. Surprisingly you will be asked to participate in ‘blitz’ days with foosball and the occasional dressing up costume to inspire you to reach out to 20 CIOs to promote the latest Gartner event. This was reminiscent of my days in software distribution sales in the late 80’s, the only thing missing is the wad of vouchers at the end. I have developed an almost phobia to the over-used Gartner term ‘no limit mindset’ as Gartner believe that you should behave like every month end is your last … seriously? I have a 20+ year successful career in IT sales and wanted to spend my last 10 at Gartner doing my best work. Unfortunately I couldn't make it to two years as I was losing my mojo and started to feel quite down. Gartner presents a great training ground for the younger sales folk who would benefit from having some solid sales skills behind them but I wouldn't recommend it for tenured folk.