Pros
- Smart and hardworking colleagues who genuinely care about delivering value. - Opportunity to work with reputable clients and gain industry experience. - Some flexibility depending on your team and manager.
Cons
Forrester prides itself on its "world-class" research and advisory, but it fails to follow its own guidance internally. The stock price has dropped below $10, and its market cap is now less than half of 2024 revenue! Meanwhile, topline revenue has been in free fall, dropping 20% in the last few years alone, and forecasted to fall even further in 2025. Others have noted the biggest driver being the forced transition to Forrester Decisions (FD). Forrester boasts that 80% of "contract value" is now on FD but refuses to report churn or acknowledge how this shift is driving revenue declines - even internally! Instead of measuring client retention and business impact, leadership cherry-picks numbers to spin FD’s success, while simultaneously executing annual layoffs to "right-size" the business. Forrester’s performance expectations are fundamentally flawed—employees are expected to juggle an unmanageable mix of client work, research deliverables, and internal projects. Research teams, notably analysts, must meet high engagement hour quotas based on client demand they can’t control. At the same time, client numbers have declined year after year, making it even harder to hit targets. Analysts are also expected to produce a relentless stream of research and content, prioritizing quantity over quality. Leadership doesn’t track engagement, readership, upselling, client retention, or any real impact, just output. Forrester’s events used to be a major business driver, particularly those inherited from SiriusDecisions, which once drew 2,000+ attendees. Since the acquisition, attendance has tanked, often falling below 1,000. Marketing has had a leadership gap for years and lacks any real strategy. Instead of long-term planning, teams are forced into last-minute scrambles to boost attendance just weeks before events. Employees spend months preparing Summit presentations, only to present to disappointingly small audiences. Internal awards and recognition feel performative rather than meaningful—employees simply get their name on a PowerPoint slide with no real reward or incentive. Leadership’s surface-level morale boosts fall flat when employees are drowning in impossible targets, layoffs, and zero meaningful support. All of these issues - declining revenue, numerous layoffs, impossible expectations, and failed strategies - lead back to one thing: Forrester’s leadership. The executive team is filled with long-time insiders with little outside experience, a CFO who repeatedly misses targets while blaming macroeconomic conditions, and a founder-CEO watching his company’s stock and his 39% ownership collapse. The board is stacked with yes-men and personal connections, failing to challenge leadership decisions or push for change. This is not a leadership team that can fix what’s broken - they are the reason it’s broken.
