Gartner is hiring again!

Just over four years ago, my colleague Lydia Leong posted a blog entry which caught my eye, titled “Five reasons you should work at Gartner with me“.  I applied, went through what was probably the toughest (but most exciting!) job interview process I’ve ever been through in my life, and got the job. Dozens of research notes and thousands of client interactions later, I can say without a doubt that it has been a blast – and now it’s my turn to share the good news: our team is hiring again!

Gartner is a great place to work (we’re almost always ranked in Glassdoor’s Best Places to Work), and the four years I’ve spent so far with the hosting, cloud & colo team have been indescribably rewarding … but in an attempt to at least try to describe it a bit … I wanted to revisit a few of Lydia’s original “reasons” and comment on them:

It is an unbeatably interesting job for people who thrive on input. You will spend your days talking to IT people from an incredibly diverse array of businesses around the globe, who all have different stories to tell about their environments and needs. Vendors will tell you about the cool stuff that they’re doing. You will be encouraged to inhale as much information as you can, reading and researching on your own. You will have one-on-one meetings with hundreds of clients each year (our busiest analysts do over 1,500 one-on-one interactions!), and get to meet countless more in informal interactions. Many of the people you talk to will make you smarter, and all of them will make you more knowledgeable.

Pretty much this.  It’s a full-on fire-hose of input, which can be both overwhelming and exciting all at the same time.  Lydia had later commented during my interview process, that so much input – even to the point of seeing what happens contractually between vendors and customers when we perform contract reviews – really helps inform your opinion on what’s truly going on in the market.  She was 100% correct on that.

You get to help people in bite-sized chunks. People will tell you their problems and you will try your best to help them in thirty minutes. After those thirty minutes, their problem is no longer yours; they’re the ones who are going to have to go back and fight through their politics and tangled snarl of systems to get things done. It’s hugely satisfying if you enjoy that kind of thing, especially since you do often get long-term feedback about how much you helped them. You’ll help IT buyer clients choose the right strategy, pick the right vendors, and save tons of money by smart contract negotiation. You’ll help vendors with their strategy, design better products, understand the competition, and serve their customers better. You’ll help investors understand markets and companies and trends, which translates directly into helping them make money. Hopefully, you’ll get to influence the market in a way that’s good for everyone.

Having spent my 20-year IT career almost exactly split between the end-user IT world and the service provider world – I can understand the hesitance that end-users will sometimes have about whether vendor promises are real, and the headaches that vendors sometimes feel in trying to figure out how to read IT buyers.  Bringing both of those perspectives together for our clients is extremely rewarding.  Nothing makes a work day better than hearing from a client “This really helped clarify things for us / you’ve pointed out some things we hadn’t even considered / I think you just saved us a half million dollars on this contract / etc.” as we wrap up a call.  It’s fun.

You get to work with great colleagues. Analysts here are smart and self-motivated. There’s no real hierarchy; we work collaboratively and as equals, regardless of our titles, with ad-hoc leadership as needed. Also, analysts are articulate, witty, and opinionated, which always makes for fun interactions. Your colleagues will routinely provide you with new insights, challenge your thinking, and provide amazing amounts of expertise in all kinds of things. There’s almost always someone who is deeply expert in whatever you want to talk about. Analysts are Gartner’s real product; research and events are a result of the people. Our turnover is extremely low.

I couldn’t have said it better myself.

All in all, it’s an exciting group to work with during an incredibly exciting time in the IT industry.  So go review the job req and if you think you’ve got what it takes – apply today!