Forrester does hire a lot of young, bright professionals to staff its research organization, though it does little to nothing with them. None of the "opportunities" available to a research associate are linked to merit, which encourages complacency and drives most of the junior staff to leave in the first year-18 months. The pay, as documented elsewhere, is barely more than half of the industry standard, and while everyone from the head of research to the head of human resources will tell you that it's not, it is. Many RAs wait tables, bartend or tutor in the evenings and on weekends just to be able to pay rent in a low-cost suburb of Boston or Cambridge.
The work that RAs do is most often unrelated to research. 90% of the job within the first year is administrative, i.e. scheduling calls, running to the cafe to buy an analyst a Snapple, etc., and while there are some analysts that value the RAs that work with them, most view them as an expendable personal assistant, and exclude them from their research process.
On a more general level, there is no connection between senior leadership and the rest of the organization. This has been commented on ad nauseam already so I won't get into detail, but when you're laying off employees and shredding their bonuses, is chartering flights to exotic locations and splurging on executive bonuses really a prudent decision?
