Forrester reviews

2.8

35% would recommend to a friend

(1,731 total reviews)
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George F. Colony

24% approve of CEO

22% positive business outlook

Forrester has an employee rating of 2.8 out of 5 stars, based on 1,731 company reviews on Glassdoor which indicates that most employees have an average working experience there. The Forrester employee rating is 20% below average for employers within the Management & Consulting industry (3.5 stars).

Reviews by job title

2K reviews
1.0
Aug 1, 2018

Great for liberals!

Anonymous employee
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

Work is fairly easy and it's a great place to coast. There's a lot of brainiac types that get so caught up in thinking that they frequently forget to actually get anything done. Projects spark up out of someone's "genius" idea and die a few weeks later so if you learn to play the game you can get away with pretty much with not doing anything as long as you can talk the talk in meetings. Backhanded compliments aside, the location is nice and and there's a gym in the building.

Cons

As noted above, this place was a breeding ground for pseudo-intellectuals. Your way-too-liberal-anti-everything college professor who only eats organic, non-GMO wheat germ? Yeah, they probably work here. They will proudly tell you about their Bernie Sanders bumper sticker covered Prius' gas mileage while telling you why Donald Trump is the devil. If you fall anywhere outside of left-extremism you're basically going to have to learn to shut your mouth or be outcasted. Diversity really only came in the form of "we hire Indian people to do IT"

2.0
Jun 7, 2018
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

Forrester has a wonderful heritage based on its Cambridge roots and heady days of building an exciting stable of analysts and research playbooks. Many kind, interesting and intelligent co-workers in Research who bring a much needed calm reassurance.

Cons

Notwithstanding HR’s concerted effort to organize Glassdoor activities to encourage positive reviews, there was a growing and pervasive sense over the past 5 years that the senior leadership is stuck in a kind of Groundhog Day scenario. Every year a new slate of senior sales / consulting leaders are introduced by George who proclaims his full support for the new and improved GTM model. But the LT all run/act scared, united by their anxiety of what the CEO will do next. George respects and shows a kind of doting kinship to the analysts. Everyone else knows they are expendable which generates rampant instability and turnover that doesn’t just wreak havoc on Sales, but erodes the kind of collaboration so vital in this business. There is a certain carpet-wearing exec whose abuse of others is legendary.

3.0
Jun 15, 2025
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

Working in the research department has been the most fun job I've ever had. I absolutely love it and hope I can stay here until I retire. Colleagues are interesting, smart, and I learn a lot from them. I get to explore interesting topics. Clients are fun to engage with. I get to do some business travel to see the world, but not too much travel. My boss has my back, and management in general cares that we don't experience burnout. I would normally highly recommend Forrester if not for what I write below in the cons.

Cons

Years back the CEO pivoted the product to one he thought would earn more ARR (AKA "contract value") and rely less on one-time revenue. It was not grounded in anything customers were actually asking for. The unsurprising result: Revenue dropped like a rock and stock price crashed to a lifetime low in real dollars. Yet the CEO continues to double-down on the obviously failed strategy while holding no one in the exec team accountable. The core of the product is selling the expertise of analysts, but 100% of analysts I've talked to - without exception - and some of their managers have no confidence in the direction, either because they think the product itself is misguided or they think we have the wrong exec team to make it work. I see no way this can succeed when the people most instrumental in making it work - the analysts - have a universal vote of no confidence. I do not recommend working here for the simple fact that the CEO is flushing the company down the toilet and seems unwilling to face reality. I gave him the benefit of the doubt for years. Now I am sceptical that Forrester has a future, because I'm sceptical that the CEO will do anything to fix the problems he created. I'll wait it out hoping I'm wrong until I lose my job in a layoff or a restructuring after a PE firm acquires it for pennies on the dollar. But I can't recommend someone come here unless you just want Forrester's brand on your CV or are OK with gambling on losing your job in a few years.

Viewing 76 - 78 of 1,731 Reviews

Glassdoor has 1,798 Forrester reviews submitted anonymously by Forrester employees. Read employee reviews and ratings on Glassdoor to decide if Forrester is right for you.