Shortsighted sales strategy - Account Executive Samsara Employee Review

2.0
Apr 11, 2020
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

- Industry leading product, phenomenal senior and product leadership. - Competitive perks. High risk high reward in sales. Team level events and spiffs frequently. - Pay is competitive if you are a top performer. If you had no experience selling into telematics or blue collar industries, it will be a learning curve from a customer interactions perspective. This can be a pro because those who gel with the sale, which depending on if you're in a role with smaller or event mid-market, can be fairly simple and transactional. The top performers tend to be inner promotes from sales development, who have dealt with blue collar buyers before.

Cons

- Reactive sales management that seems to not be able to keep track of their frequently shifting policies and procedures. Scroll through reviews of Samsara for customer facing roles and you'll see a pattern of mixed reviews. They don't fulfill the promises they make to their employees such as commission relief for 1 time vacation that they sell you on as part of your offer. - A facade of employee care. You're truly just a number. They've got enough $ to throw around for employee events but that doesn't compensate for unnecessarily cutthroat performance policies. Sales targets are no longer being blown out by 300% and the sink or swim mentality from senior sales leadership all the way down to team managers hasn't evolved everyone unnecessarily stressed. -Changing to quarter quotas from monthly quotas isn't throwing your employees a bone, but a natural upmarket evolution for forecasting at a rapid growth company. - Customer churn because of buyers remorse falls on reps as do deliquesces. Clawbacks are common and randomly applied to your sales number. Correspondingly the sales strategy is trial sell and try to close the customer on the first call. If you are apprehensive of over promising or discount selling, this won't be your gig. - Sales enablement is basic. That said, so are Samsara customers for the most part. Prepare to feature and benefits sell to a blown out list of bad data. Most of your customers don't have personal business emails. - This place burns through reps. If you don't gel immediately, you're unwanted. HR is seriously lacking. Under-resourced and not reliable when it comes to relating to employees or providing clarity on very important details such as performance standing.

Explore other reviews about Samsara

5.0
Jun 25, 2026
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

I started at Samsara as an Enterprise ADR and was promoted to Commercial Account Executive after exactly 1 year. The support and recognition I received throughout that time greatly exceeded my expectations! Leadership genuinely invests in employee development. My manager and director consistently provided thoughtful coaching, were accessible when I needed feedback, and made me feel so supported in reaching my goals. The culture is one of Samsara's biggest strengths, truly. People celebrate each other's wins, collaborate well, and respect clear Rules of Engagement that create a fair and professional environment. There is a strong sense of teamwork without the internal competition that can exist at most sales organizations. The earning potential is real, quotas are attainable, and the quarterly structure provides enough time to recover from a slow start and still be successful. The work-life balance is also strong, especially for a high-growth company. One thing that really stood out to me was how many promoted AEs (including myself) still wanted to come into the office even though the AE role is remote. Leadership listened to that feedback and created additional office space to accommodate the growing team, which says a lot about how much they value employee experience and culture! Overall, it's a place where people work hard, support each other, and genuinely enjoy being part of the team.

Cons

The biggest opportunity for improvement is preparing ADRs for the transition into closing roles. Samsara does an excellent job teaching products, strategy, and prospecting skills, and managers work hard to prepare employees for promotion. That said, additional training around discovery, deal management, forecasting, and negotiation before promotion would make the move into an AE role even smoother.

2.0
Jul 9, 2026
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

Innovative product, constantly growing the platform

Cons

Compensation doesn’t feel competitive for the workload and expectations of the role. Frequent annual changes—including territory realignments, account books, verticalization, and quota adjustments—create unnecessary disruption and make it difficult to build long-term customer relationships and pipeline. The company has grown rapidly, but account distribution hasn’t always kept pace with headcount, leaving many reps competing for limited opportunity and making OTE difficult to achieve consistently. The Team Lead role is one of the biggest pain points. Team Leads are expected to operate like frontline managers without the compensation or authority that comes with a management position. They carry a fully ramped quota while also traveling, mentoring new hires, leading office hours, answering rep questions, supporting onboarding, and taking on enablement responsibilities. While these leadership opportunities can be rewarding, they often come at the expense of selling time and make it significantly harder to hit quota.

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