Forrester Research Reviews

Current Employee – been working at Forrester Research full-time for more than 3 years

Pros – Working with some of the smartest minds in the technology industry as well as having C level execs from top Fortune 500 companies as your clients. Autonomy, freedom a big company ethic with a small company mindset and a pretty happy company culture. Average tenure is high with hundreds of folk across departments having been with the company for 10+ years. A hugely respected name to build your own personal brand around. George Colony is a fabulous, inspirational CEO but could be more involved with spending time getting to know with his teams outside of head office in Cambridge, USA.

Cons – Too US-centric at time although big strides are being made and the board have finally realized the importance of EMEA and APAC. Too many radical changes introduced in 2012 for the teams to keep up with which resulted in loss of potential earnings from sales and an unusual spike in attrition. A penny pinching attitude at times to save a few thousand dollars when the real cost of losing great people runs into the hundreds of thousands in lost revenue, hiring and training.

Advice to Senior Management – Spend more time listening to the people on the ground and in the trenches. Not just in vast open forums, but each member of the board should once a month take a small group representing a cross section of departments and seniority for a few drinks or dinner and really talk. Each Exec could take a table of 10 out for dinner once a month and within a year, everyone in the company would get to spend some quality one on one time with a Director and have a voice. Genuis. To introduce a bit more fun as everyone that works at Forrester is deeply commited, so some down time to get to know each other works wonders.

Yes, I would recommend this company to a friend – I'm optimistic about the outlook for this company

Current Employee – been working at Forrester Research full-time for more than 10 years

Pros – People, very talented people to work with.
The sector/industry: dynamic and ever-changing.
It is still a small company with some kind of start-up mentality.
Forrester clients: very interesting companies engaged with Forrester.

Cons – It is still an American firm: everything is centralized and all decisions are made from the Boston headquarters, with little knowledge/input from offices outside the US.
Red-tape/hierarchy: There is little career path at Forrester. Promotions are not based on skills/expertise, but on who you know in Boston. Although there is a training department (L&D and ST), there is no succession plan, and competency benchmarks and assessments are a once-in-a-year event. Managers/HR does not leverage input for coaching/promotions.
Management/Executive team: The vast majority of managers/executives come from internal promotions at Forrester. A great individual contributor does not make a good manager. Forrester is stuck into its own world with little new and fresh blood from the outside.
Lack of coherent long-term strategy: If the strategy does not give results in 6 months' time, there will be changes and redundancies, even if Forrester proudly announces how much cash it has in the bank.
Lack of communication/collaboration among teams/regions: Decisions made at executive level are not properly and timely communicated to the field, what creates rumours and frustration.
Focus on Gartner: Forrester is always comparing itself against Gartner: in each presentation/training, Gartner is always mentioned. Forrester will do much better IF it focused on what makes the company unique.

Advice to Senior Management – Listen to your teams and clients and do what the field is requesting. Develop your team members and go back to what make Forrester unique.
To the executive team: "walk the line": truly apply Forrester culture and values!

Yes, I would recommend this company to a friend – I'm not optimistic about the outlook for this company

Former Employee – worked at Forrester Research full-time for more than a year

Pros – Smart people, fresh thinking, opportunity to work with large accounts

Cons – Nano-management, lack of autonomy, tactical sales process.

Advice to Senior Management – you have a great offering, better believe your own capability and inspire confidence in the ranks. changing the strategy every year doesn't help.

No, I would not recommend this company to a friend – I'm not optimistic about the outlook for this company

Current Employee – been working at Forrester Research full-time

Pros – - good work environment, fun, intelligent and friendly people that are always willing to help
- good product
- great opportunity to learn about the tech industry
- excellent networking opportunities
- excellent office location

Cons – - very few opportunities to progress, no clear career path for most positions
- too many unnecessary business processes slowing you down
- unless you are in sales or a top analyst, there is little recognition for your work
- non-transparent salary structure, bonus structure is demotivating
- too many organizational changes coupled with unrealistic expectations from senior management
- too US centric

Advice to Senior Management – Get rid of processes that slow down and frustrate your employees, introduce a clear career path for each team/department, be more transparent on salaries and promote more employees outside the headquarters into senior management positions

Former Employee – worked at Forrester Research full-time for more than 7 years

Pros – Great people, good culture, good quality product

Cons – Poor progression opportunities, dreadful sales management, unrealistic expectations resulting in a huge loss of staff in 2012,

Advice to Senior Management – Re-evaluate how you reward your longest serving staff, so much good talent left recently due to foolish planning and compensations structures

Yes, I would recommend this company to a friend – I'm not optimistic about the outlook for this company

Current Employee – been working at Forrester Research full-time for more than a year

Pros – Lots of very good, intelligent colleagues.
Most people are keen to help each other achieve common goals
Great clients.
Ambitious company.
Generally a good atmosphere in the office

Cons – Limited career opportunities
Despite stating interest in Europe, still treated as a US outpost
Losing some great people due to short term errors from senior management

Advice to Senior Management – Less naval gazing from an ivory tower and get back to focusing on great client experiences

Yes, I would recommend this company to a friend – I'm not optimistic about the outlook for this company

Current Employee – been working at Forrester Research

Pros – The People/Team, Location of office, Training and Development, Work/Life balance, Clients- access to Executives

Cons – Political- it's who you know, Low compensation compared to competitors

No, I would not recommend this company to a friend

Current Employee – been working at Forrester Research

Pros – Growth, challenge, networking, client base

Cons – Individual performance is diluted by the fact that goals are heavily team performance impacted, and the 'matrix' concept is a tremendous dis-incentive.,

Advice to Senior Management – Growth in the past 4 years has outpaced management's progress in evolving the resourcing and performance measurement criteria. The leadership needs to upgrade and update their thinking.

Yes, I would recommend this company to a friend

Former Employee – worked at Forrester Research

Pros – Good name to have on your resume. Fun, intelligent people to work with, relaxed working environment

Cons – Very few opportunities for advancement/promotions, while on the surface it seems to be the case that there are many. Forrester is a highly political place (even though this is only typical of a much larger company) - you can only win if you know the game and play by the rules. There is an unbelievable amount of red-tape to jump through in order to accomplish the smallest task (at the expense of productivity and quality), and employees are encouraged to invent more "processes" in order to receive praise/promotions, which is extremely counterproductive. The HR department is bloated with unnecessary made-up positions. The turn-over is very high, no doubt due to inadequate level of compensation compared to other similar companies, and no appreciation whatsoever for the hard effort and the extra hours.

Advice to Senior Management – Slash half of HR, reduce the number of processes and instead focus on the quality of deliverables.

No, I would not recommend this company to a friend

Current Employee – been working at Forrester Research

Pros – Forrester gives you the opportunity to work with a very smart bunch of analysts, has a great data library and it's a very good place to start your career in the market reserach world.

Cons – the managemnet at Forrester is terrible, the atmos[here is one of competition rather than collaboration and the focus is on winning advisory and consulting work than delivering syndicated research.

Advice to Senior Management – The management nees to communciate better with employees, understand their day-to-day responsibilites and issues and provide support in developing their careers

No, I would not recommend this company to a friend