Pros
You get vendor Swag, you get a great discount on products, and if you are lucky, you may get the chance to talk to some great customers (famous musicians, voice -actors, and celebrities).
Cons
This is my experience and what I have observed from friends of mine working the same position. There are standards you will have to meet especially in the first year rolling out after the training. You will have to grind hours and work overtime if you want to get dibs on new customers that open up from other Sales Engineers who get fired or quit. Lots of prospecting leads. Management will critique you based off your numbers. They do this because it is easy to talk about from one Manager I have talked about this. Some Sales Engineers will be greedy, and cause drama regarding if you deserve commission from helping out their customers if they call in. I believe this is because to make decent money, there is a lot of red tape to close sales especially big system quotes you are building for customers. Every piece of commission counts. It is bad enough you will get some bad customer interactions, but to get it from your own team/department makes it even more tiring/irritating. Morning meetings are not paid yet you are expected to put in a few extra hours a week. I worked 49 hours a week because I was required to show up to meetings from vendors showing me how to plug an Audio Interface with a USB (Waste of Time). Vendors pay Sweetwater to get meeting time, which makes it even worse. It is nice Sweetwater gets something from it, but the employees just get what they call, "Sales Chops." Lastly, PTO is now 15 Days a year. You can roll over 5; however, you need to save a few extra days in case you get sick. The problem with this is some people cannot help getting sick frequently, which puts them in a situation where they cannot take days off because they are out of PTO. Because of this, this makes it easier for other people to get sick, which becomes a domino effect. I suggested a work from home plan if you do end up getting sick. That way you will not have to use PTO, you can still work, and you will protect your fellow co-workers from getting sick. In a meeting, Sweetwater said they do not have infrastructure to create work from home environment. Even though they were able to during COVID. I guess when you are required by the state government you have no choice... Lots of corporate politics, lack of transparency from management (not all), and pointless morning meetings you have to attend that you do not get paid for. But hey, Sweetwater gets paid though.
