Thread regarding Gartner Inc. layoffs

@1ds

Same with MANY analysts, it's a trend.

They have strategically eliminated at least 16 55+ Individual Contributors within their Global Enterprise sales org. in the past 24 months. Eliminating higher salaries and replacing with younger, lower-paid sales reps.

@1ac which is hilariously ironic given teams - like LSA - and other sales recruiting teams utterly defunct & incapable of not only hiring solid talent, but coming up with any coherent strategy operate at the bare minimum for a TA BU. You could eliminate entire LSA team and the TA org wouldn’t even realize they’re gone. lol.

Can’t wait for the “rah-rah” Obert/Losada circlej--ktown hall style sales recruiting meeting.

@15x and the email was riddled with “accept the feedback” “absorb the feedback”. Performance management is going to get more intense.

The attempt to return to BAU has been somewhat thwarted by the fact that most, if not all of TA, feel terrible after last week. Even those on teams unaffected are saying there’s zero motivation.

I’m very curious to see who’s going to (voluntarily) leave next. There’s bound to be hundreds of us who now feel disillusioned and are ready to jump ship.

Disgusted but not surprised by the lack of empathy and communication. 10% of the function gets cut and senior leadership vanishes into thin air with not a single comment from anyone above my manager. Then they have the gall to send EOY review prompts about how “great” our year’s been? It’s tone-deaf beyond belief.

12K views + 100 replies.

Go try to control that narrative...

@114 No but the silence is loud! No further updates from leadership since everything went down.

@114 Same here. I was wondering the same thing. I did too much scrolling of people who have reposted.

@r9 I’m guessing there will be, especially with the tone-deaf email Obert sent. I am dreading logging in on Monday. I looked at LinkedIn today and am sure they’re really unhappy with the LinkedIn posts. Is anyone hearing from leadership to not interact with them so they can bury this quickly?

Any word on additional cuts in TA? Starting to wonder how they’ll try to make Q4 look better.

@my

Yep, Glassdoor's revenue is going down. They had a bunch of layoffs back in July (1300). Beyond the job market situation, we all feel the weakened employee confidence using the platform (this and last year), it's pretty low across the board. They even said so. So hey, Glassdoor, fix it! (it's not AI, Glassdoor, it's your business model, lol)

@kz Glassdoor allows employers to pay to monitor posts and “challenge” content and then take unfavorable posts down. It’s considered a “pay to play” platform for corporations to control their brand. Gartner also pays to be considered for Glassdoor’s “Best Place to work” award. Other companies do as well.

@gh I wonder if we had the same manager….

@kv tell us more about Glassdoor. How is that legal that Gartner can modify reviews? Can they tell who is writing what?

also, on the main page there are two toggle buttons "New" and "Active" - if you hit "Active" it'll sort all threads that had recent comments.

@ks All good! I am mad also so it didn't come across clearly. Reading comprehension and writing comprehension go hand in hand so I take responsibility. :-)

Folks we should move onto the main page /gartner or www.thelayoff.com/gartner and start threads there, in that case you can roll up responses to a single post that's topical. Also, it looks like mods/admins are moderating the site and if they nuke this superlong thread for whatever reason (e..g, someone goes rogue and starts posting 'unwelcome' content) all of this is lost. it's important for us to keep this thread alive so people who are looking for jobs and researching can see what's going on and where good/bad things are. right now, on glassdoor things are so moderated and gartner is paying for the ability to moderate what's being posted, we spend $20K+ on that and we are admins of our glassdoor page. they cannot do that here on thelayoff and insights are much better for anyone researching things even though this site slants towards 'negative' quite a bit. imho, the right way to research the employer is to go to glassdoor to see where they are doing good and here on thelayoff to see what people are complaining about. then overlap two sets, remove the extremes, and you get a fairly good picture on where the things may be as it relates to the employer(s).

anyhow, my strong suggestion is that we start creating independent threads on the main gartner page here....

sorry for a long resonse, i was gonna just mention the main page and i went way too wide...

Agree with @km on "Gartner doesn't define me" - this is the key, once you sort that with yourself, you are liberated and all of this mess affects you much less.

@km hah! You’re so right. Sorry for that. I’m seeing red all the time.

@k8 Reading comprehension is important. In no way do I correlate still being here as being a high performer. I know I am whether Gartner cuts me or not...that is my point. Gartner doesn't define me and I am certainly not being groomed LOL. I am not a tow the company line person. I'm saying I stand with everyone that was laid off and agree something is fishy. Let's stop bashing each other and get back to the topic at hand regarding Gartner not valuing us.

@kd

I was reading some old posts in here :-)

Sell to C-suite using analysts that never had a job in the real world and/or are more junior than the customer, etc.

Obert is just the OC’s useful id--t in terms of attempting to close the ever-growing gap between contract churn & significant developments in AI advancements tied to the research industry.

Growing quota bearing headcount sounds great on earnings calls, but impossible to execute when the bulk of the sales strategy has relied upon government and public contract renewals that aren’t returning into the hundreds of millions.

Remember when they rolled out the whole “must be selling to the C suite” strategy. Wholly out of touch, top down. Lol

@kb

The company is not being investigated by the SEC (currently, it was in the past), but by at least two (2) law firms on behalf of investors (due to the stock drop and potentially misleading information).

The information has been posted here (since August 13, just a few posts below this one if you follow the list), see link below and you can also read the entire thread:

https://www.thelayoff.com/post/@OP+1k2jbqtsw

@jc do you have any links about that SEC investigation and Gartner misleading shareholders? cannot find anything in news archives.

9K views - LOL - i urge the execs to contain this public outroar of 9K employees - what a PR mess

Current TA here— this all has made me so sad to read. If you’re reading this and you were laid off, I hope it helps a little to know that things are not the same here. We were given another talk track to respond to questions about these layoffs, and the people I’m close with are really conflicted on whether or not to use them. I am so sorry, everyone impacted.

@k6 I really hope you don’t find out the hard way that this had nothing to do with performance. The best sourcer I’ve worked with in my career was laid off, and no one can explain why. Robin’s messaging of “kick a-s in your role and opportunities will come” is misleading at best, and an outright lie at worst—your stance that your performance has kept you safe stems from Gartner’s grooming.

@g8 You misunderstood my comment. Just because I know in my heart I am a top performer doesn't mean @fy assessment is correct. I stand with everyone that was laid off and agree something is not adding up. "Keep your mouth shut or you're gone." What a way to live!

I am very sad to read this. Although I left a few years ago, I thoroughly enjoyed my lengthy tenure at Gartner. I learnt so much and really thrived in a TA organisation that continually pushed (broke) boundaries and arguably we were best in class. I was fortunate enough to work for and with some absolutely brilliant TA & HR people.
We established and operated in a culture that was not only hugely rewarding but we had an immense amount of fun and laughter (yes it really did happen). I was lucky to see so many different parts of the world and meet some amazing people with my job.
With huge growth, changes happen and it was inevitable that the environment, job, processes and culture would change.
You can say that bringing sales leadership into TA was a misjudgement but to me that only emphasised how vital TA is to the overall strategy.
I hope Gartner’s growth ship gets back on track and the remaining TA Team continue to continue raising the bar driving quality hiring. Nothing but best wishes to the people who have been laid off but rest assured, like me, the things Gartner gave you will stand you in excellent stead elsewhere.
I will always be thankful to Gartner.
Cheers

@jc I’m glad they’re being investigated. They mislead current associates about their performance to create a false sense of security and so we can repeat it back to candidates; it follows that they would have been able to mislead shareholders in the same way.

@jc definitely will be. After years of convincing people to accept lower pay for growth opportunity and “culture,” I think the best thing I can do now is tell the truth for people who are curious about working there.

Anyone posting neg reviews on Glassdoor? I also saw Gartner is now being investigated by SEC for misleading shareholders… company is going to sh-t

@fh empty Flouride stare- lol. My question is why is a Sales leader overseeing TA? Not one day of HR experience, yet here we are

@gv The irony is something, isn’t it. Lol

@gv hahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha

@gs you mean the ones who havent sold before?

@gs ironically, from my knowledge none got the boot. Gartner is laughable at this point.

@gr Any word if LSA’s were impacted? Arguably a collection of the most useless group TA had. Former Sales recruiter here but many moons ago.

@fy not remotely true. Some of my teammates who were cut were great performers with strong tenure. And high performing leaders were cut as well.
I get that it’s comforting to say that “high-performers weren’t impacted” because it makes you feel safe, but the truth is we don’t know what the criteria were and and Gartner isn’t going to give us the truth