Grateful to get corporate experience, but left me traumatized and jaded
Pros
If you're a new graduate looking for full-time employment in a corporate environment, this is a wonderful stepping stone. Get your experience in and get out. Teams can be hit or miss, but when you have a collaborative team it feels less isolating. Working as a SAM will definitely toughen your skin and expose you to all kinds of situations, so take that experience and use it to be a better version of yourself (professionally)
Cons
Expectations shift day to day without notice, so measuring KPI's isn't consistent and may give you mental whiplash during your annual review. Salary and raises don't depend on your work portfolio or accomplishments, but rather upper managements biases towards you. HR isn't there for you - if you try bringing up salary or bonus inequality, they will tell you that it's "taboo and disappointing" to talk about salary. I'll tell you the reason why it's taboo: because this company doesn't want you to know about the giant wage gap between their employees who are of equal experience. SAM's in particular are severely underpaid and under-appreciated for the amount of work they put in. During COVID, we wore many hats with little to no incentive, just a verbal "good job, keep it up". After 3+ years, a "good job" isn't enough. We were TAM, BAM, SAM, PM, you name it. We were working with less than half a team because SAMs kept quitting. Says a lot, doesn't it?
