Sadly, just about everything else relating to the way the sales department is run belongs in the “cons” list. Our scheduling is a nightmare. There are Senior Sales Engineers running businesses that generate $3-5 million a year in sales working the late-night “customer service rep” shifts answering calls about missing packages and payment issues until 10pm. There’s a weird rotation that everyone participates in, virtually regardless of tenure, that assigns weekend shifts (sometimes Saturday, sometimes Sunday). More established Sales Engineers regularly “sell” these shifts for a price to younger guys. It’s a pathetic situation for a billion-dollar company and honestly something we should be ashamed of. (For years there’s been one person in charge of scheduling nearly 700 peoples’ weekly shifts, which is itself one of the main reasons for this convoluted and barely functioning system.) Only recently has upper management even been willing to admit that there’s a problem with scheduling. Apparently a group of senior sales guys had been invited to brainstorm new ideas with a few managers last year and they had created a proposal for a block schedule, but it was shot down for reasons that have never been disclosed publicly and we’re stuck with the same dysfunctional schedule.
The biggest grumble lately has been the change to the pay structure. What used to be a fairly simple commission structure has now turned into a complicated payout system based on an algorithm that is looking at some pretty arbitrary metrics. Anyone who has actually does the job will tell you that they don’t really make sense.
Others have already written about the lack of diversity here, and I must agree. You’ll get the standard canned response from our Chief People Officer about how many organizations we partner with that promote women in music and people of color in music. These are great for PR, but don’t let that fool you. Anyone that isn’t straight, White, Christian, cisgender, and male is in an overwhelming minority at Sweetwater. If a diverse workplace is important to you, this is not the place for you. (I saw a comment from our CPO on another review where he mentions us hiring 2.5 times more women in 2021 than in 2020. That’s laughable. Hiring 5 women instead of 2 in sales is a growth factor of 2.5x, but I’m not sure that’s something we should be proud of quite yet when the numbers are still so comically low.)
There is also an active fight AGAINST the concept of working from home. Most of us would agree that there are benefits to coming in to the office (especially given the perks the campus offers listed above), but managers throw a tantrum anytime the remote work conversation comes up. The claim is that a job based on phone and email sales “just can’t be done” outside the building. Despite the COVID-19 lockdown proving that the job could be done from home just fine (where our sales kept growing and breaking records, by the way), there’s still complete inflexibility shown regarding remote work. It’s baffling.
Overall, the outlook for the sales management team is pretty bleak. We work for disconnected bosses who don’t understand what we do and for the most part don’t show any desire to learn. Trying to offer helpful feedback or speak up against policies that obviously aren’t working gets one labeled as toxic and every opinion one shares after that is invalidated based on ad hominem attacks. There isn’t a single policy that actually HELPS Sales Engineers implemented in the last 6 years. Instead, we have been forced to work longer hours while our pay has been reduced with no actual leadership from above to guide us, in the middle of a pandemic when we were forced to return to the office way sooner than it was safe, with no way to work remotely.
TLDR: if you want to work for a company where you can put your head down and work long hours to make bank quickly despite toxic people trying to micromanage you, Sweetwater is great. If you’re looking for strong and positive leadership, a healthy work environment, upwards mobility, flexibility to work offsite or set your own hours… don’t bother. Sweetwater will have to adapt eventually, but unfortunately the key decision makers in sales are still a few years from retiring.
