Pros
The SDR community specifically is very warm, welcoming, and collaborative. It’s not a cold, cutthroat sales org that you’ll find in a lot of spaces. People in the SDR org are really there to help you.
Cons
Confluent is quite a difficult product to sell, especially if you don’t come from a data engineering background. Your success can also heavily depend on your territory and which revenue band you sell to (ie., Enterprise vs. Commercial). You really have to take the time to study the product, your clients, and understand that even no matter how hard you hustle, if it’s not the right place at the right time, it will be a very hard sell. I see a lot of people work as a SDR in one revenue band (ex. Enterprise) then get promoted to AE in another (ex. SMB) and struggle to close deals because they expect to find success in the way they did as an SDR but realize that the revenue band they’re in as an AE requires a whole different approach. And the promotion process from SDR to AE is also pretty unclear and (according to many of those who have gone through it) arduous.