I’m an account manager, all our sales people are now totally demoralized. Middle management is totally ineffectual now that the CEO needs to sign off on every little detail - over 3,000 employees! For the past 5 years I liked my manager up until the last few months because now our only interactions are for box checking bullshit and he’s either asking for info I’ve already given him or barking orders. VP just came into town asking “what will it take to double your number?” and I made up some bullshit because I know he can’t do anything for me. I know that most people in the company feel the same as I do because with the level of effort it’s clear nobody cares anymore.
The pessimist in me says the company is different now and it’s time to move on. The optimist in me thinks about how I’m in a very cyclical industry and this is a signal of the bottom.
What’s the vibes like out there?
Its true nobody cares. Money talks
and bullshit takes the bus
That's ture
Nobody gives af about your well being. They just want profits and growth for the company.
I had a manager tell me my surgery wasn’t that serious and I should be back the next day.
The surgeon recommended I take off 6 weeks.
These animals will literally kill you as long as you can help them hit their number. Then they’ll replace you and never think of you again.
That’s what happens when a manager who has no idea how to sell or carry a territory anymore reacts.
They’re in a pinch because regardless of how much time off you take, they’re still on the hook for your quota. So a good, capable level 1 manager will just put their head down and start being a bit more player than coach. But if they don’t know how to anymore, they’ll just insist you minimize time off so that if that attainment doesn’t come in, they can purely blame you.
I only took off a week after having 2 discs replaced in my neck. Spine surgery. I teed my manager up to help handle a few tasks while I was out and not a damn thing was done.
Shit rolls downhill. Board to CEO to VP to Sales Mgr. to your sorry ass. Sometimes with lube, sometimes not. Start the clock and start networking. Gain a new skill and competency with each new venture. Solve a problem, and you'll soon be working for yourself.
This
If your CEO needs to sign off on everything, he's getting immense pressure about too many expenses and not enough sales.
Bullseye. This is my first time experiencing first hand that hitting my numbers isn’t enough. If the company isn’t hitting their numbers I get put under the same microscope as Joe blow who sucks.
Going through that right now. About to put up the biggest yearly number in company history (at 150% to plan). That’s apparently not enough effort for my national sales director, who questioned why I would take off the last 2 weeks of the year to hang out with my newborn son and family in town for Christmas. And yes, I have plenty of vacation days left.
Gotta make up for the shitty reps he’s hired recently, I guess.
I feel you. Our whole team is at or over quota, but the company as a whole isn't.
We were told no PTO until after January 1st, in solidarity with the other teams who are struggling.
Just dont request the PTO and take it anyway. Its part of your compensation. They wouldnt tell you that you are getting paid less the last two weeks because the other teams dont get paid as much as you.
Time to go. If a company thinks they are more important than your family…they can kick rocks. I wouldn’t put up with that. There is no amount of money that is worth missing out on my kids life.
Yeah you want to say, “fuck you I’m over budget”, but you need to play the cautiously humble game and act like you are changing up your approach based on feedback you received and are setting up a big 26’. Don’t oversell it.
Yep, danger! Thin ice! Not just you, the whole business.
Too many companies at record profits AND in crisis mode.
Anyone got an in on coffin sales?
Sounds good until no one has the money to buy a coffin.
CEO is under PIP. 🤣🤣🤣
Feel you 100%, OP.
My company was sold off to PE last December. What has unfolded since is death by a thousand KPIs and my Manager going from an ally to an active roadblock.
I hit my number in Q3 and have been looking and applying since.
Life is too short for bullshit. Its gotta be greener on the other side of the fence, right?
We did the PE thing last year. They’re merging us with another company and telling us we have to double our numbers while cutting costs by 33%. New hires are office only. I’m one of the few remote employees left and just had an amazing Q3/Q4 but my specialized role is being eliminated and I’m being put into my old role with everyone else. Eventually the plan is to decrease my pay to be the same as the merged companies reps (who make less). It’s a shitty situation to be in.
Clearly, its time to move on. Doubling your numbers while slashing costs is a shadow rif. They're going to shink the salesforce when only a few ppl make the new number.
I feel you. We are PE owned, my quota has gone up 400% over the past 2 years, I exceeded again this year with a very lofty number that I'm positive was designed for me not to hit as the other 2 reps with numbers that are aligned with me did not hit.
Now they are completely changing our comp structure to match how every other companies reps are paid and I'm sure I'm in for another 200% increase.
Writing is on the wall!
If your company is bought by PE, pack your chute. It's a slow, agonizing death spiral as they loot the company blind.
Just submit your resignation, effective immediately as soon as they announce it. If they want to keep you on for transition, negotiate a contract
Are you me? Everything is the same, except I was laid off the first week of November out of the blue with two huge deals closing and onboarding this month. I made it a point to call both accounts and let them know I was no longer running their deal and both backed out and went with a competitor.
You are right
In death, man has no quota.
Lo acabo de leer, pero veo que la historia se repite!!
Sales is mercenary work. If the new general sucks go find a different army dude
You would of thrived in medieval times
I’d have been digging for potatoes in a shit field with my ancestors let’s be honest 😂
It's a metaphor
It was a joke hahahahaha
What does the joke mean? All of those things still exist today. Let alone seeing someone write "would of" ... I don't get it.
you have no sense of humor
He would of if he left the ego at the virtual door.
Haha fair enough, the internet is enough to humble any man. Pitchforks down lads.
Welcome back! Hahaha
Barely
That’s what I do
Doesn’t matter what the vibe is like out there. Right now it only matters about the vibe you’re in, and it’s horrible.
I’m hearing the extremes. People are struggling to get interviews, or they are getting several, it’s weird.
My recommendation is you should update your resume and start looking. Don’t get caught flat footed when they pull a RIF.
Remember, you’re always a free agent.
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Lmao they are so dumb
Industry dependant, but also age dependant.. I’m 55 in the food industry and I think I’ll be able to finish out a good career in an industry I enjoy. If I was 28, I’d be side-hustling trying to learn as much about AI as possible, hoping to be one of the 2-3 humans left standing and needed by my company for sales..
Vibes for sales as a career are less positive than I’ve felt them, but certainly not “hopeless”. Have a plan, work hard and work smart.
This field of sales will be around longer than others with thid new AI craze
Why are so many tech companies feeling this way now?
1) We’re at a point with a lot of under-qualified leaders with more immense pressure on their heads. Good example is lots of companies had top down mandates to be more AI forward. So execs invested in AI in some capacity, but now are at a point where they need to prove the value or justify the spend of something they were basically pressured to do.
2) Probably more notably, there’s a LOT of unemployed people out there who would gladly take your job, so the risk of employee led attrition doesn’t scare a company. They can treat you like shit because if you don’t like it, they surely will be able to find someone that will tolerate it.
I think its wild the pink elephant in the room is AI is a neat trick but really doesn't help as much as we have been sold it does.
I am seeing this. Even if the idea is terrible, management just does whatever the board requests. We are being force fed "mandatory ai tools" which are just crushing micromanagement layers that makes it harder...damn near impossible to meet customer needs. There is only one stakeholder they care about. And it is not the customer or the employee.
Developer salary is no longer a tax write-off for research and development like it had been since the 60s, starting a few years ago, related to Trump 1.0 tax cuts. Add AI and interest rates and boom, this.
time to bail
Ain’t no place to bail to
Every location at my company is down across the entire US and missing their annual quota.
Yet us sales peeps are still getting barked at every week and being questioned if we are doing our job and if we are even working, rather than see what’s happening outside our doors
It’s just the nature of the game. When times are tough, the reps aren’t doing enough. When times are good, we need the reps to break the new records
3k people and the CEO is doing approvals? Never seen that past 120 people
Honestly, at the end of the day it’s just the numbers that matter — nothing else.
That's the point: nobody cares. Who cares if they ask you to do more when it's clearly impossible, keep working hard as you always did and fake it until u make it.
Do you work in the same place I do?
🤣 I feel like we all do!
What company?
I feel you.
https://www.reddit.com/r/sales/s/KDywde99Qg
Sorta in a same situation. Everything is so top heavy and all the reps at our company are being watched closely in day to day.
We are ranked based on KPIs instead of overall market growth/sales. This is burning people out and it gets harder and harder to achieve each quarter. Genuine question for everyone is it like this everywhere anymore? I’ve been in sales now for 3 years after graduating college and I feel like since then I’ve always been under the thumb of upper management and I’m already exhausted. I don’t know just seeing how everyone else feels.
Publicly traded?
Do not allow outside factors to cloud your mood (easy to say, not easy to implement).
This is tough, and nothing anyone one of us will say is going to make things better at work for you. Just know that it’s not you, it’s just the environment we’re in right now.
And as a career in sales, this is something that usually doesn’t go away. Sales teams are the ones closest to revenue and feel the most heat, both when things are good and bad. It’s never enough and won’t ever be.
Things get even harder during this time of the year, and the current economy (which I think is a phrase that can be used at literally ANY given year) isn’t the best time to for us salespeople the warm and fuzzies.
That said, it’s not that nobody cares. It’s more that everyone else is going through the same emotions as you. They’re just as worried. They’re humans too. Let them focus on their worries while you figure out a plan for yourself.
PE buy your company?
This is the reality of tech right now. PE is buying up just about everything, and all the founders out there, bar a few unicorns, are just angling for their own PE/VC payday.
It's going to be a jungle out there for a while, keep your head down, keep a good job when you have it, and always shop around.
Me encantaría conocerte, no sé porque me suena tu película.
Con un poco de suerte consiguen que un grupo financiero que se quede con el pastel, la reestructure y la vuelva a vender. Si no, llegarán los salvadores que se terminarán por comer lo que queda y tendrá un triste final.
Aquí tienes un amigo y un colaborador para lo que necesites...
Once you reach this point there’s no turning it around to care again - time to start interviewing for the next role.
The management/leadership issues are unfortunately common in a lot of sales orgs. Personally, I’d say 10-20% of my managers were good (or at least didn’t suck), and only one was extremely helpful, supportive, kind and cared about our well being - was an amazing year. Unfortunately the majority get pressure from above, have terrible stress management and then turns to team belittling and micro managing
A lot of us in tech sales are paying for the sins of COVID contracts. Money was plentiful, companies bought too much, didn’t pay close attention to ways they could decrease licenses in a business downturn.
We get to own those deeply discounted shit storms. I’ve got my accounts with free shit given away just to secure a done deal.
It’s burning out my AMs, CSMs, and SEs. I’m a part time therapist.
Just try and grit through it. I assure you the job market is much worse to deal with.
2026 should be much better as most of these bad deals expire and companies come out of two years of really bad churn.
How’s the company doing? What’s their market position? Is it declining? Lots of questions that need answered here. That said, it looks like micromanagement is taking hold. I almost always take that as a sign to bounce.
I feel like what you’re describing isn’t really a motivation issue as much as it is a trust issue inside the organization. In my experience, when decision making gets pulled all the way to the top, a lot of the leadership in the middle starts to feel more like box checking than actual leading. Over time, that disconnect can make even solid performers feel disengaged, not because they don’t care, but because their effort doesn’t seem to move anything anymore.
The VP question you mentioned really stood out to me. In my opinion, when leaders ask “what would it take to double your number” without being able to change constraints or remove friction, it can start to feel more like signaling than strategy. I also think this is where it gets tricky, because being at the bottom of a cycle and being at the start of a real decline can feel almost identical from the inside. It’s hard to tell which one you’re in while you’re living it.
If it were me, I wouldn’t rush to a decision, but I would start quietly taking inventory. Keeping skills sharp, keeping the network warm, and keeping options open feels like a low risk move either way. From conversations I’ve been having, a lot of sellers seem to be feeling similar pressure right now, so you’re definitely not alone in questioning the situation.
If you’re in B2B sales, I host an online community dedicated to networking and coaching each other to be the best versions of ourselves. The best part is, it is completely free.
👉👉👉 www.thepipelinesociety.com
I think it depends on the industry. End of the day, the unemployment rates suggest that it is a challenging market.. That being said I work in CPG, and the overall headcount reductions haven't been as crazy as the tech layoffs. Fingers crossed it turns around in general for the wider industries.
Time to move on. That said, garbage managers come from garbage employees. Be the best you can be no matter the role.
I don’t think it’s just your company. It’s societal. A lot of people talk about the end of “millennial optimism” as a big shift in identity/ something that feels defining for the 2020s. I don’t think we care as much about anything in general.
What's the cyclical industry?
Who cares
Companies change. At one point in time it was awesome to be a sales rep at Blackberry and Yahoo. Now not so much