Most if not all of the rumors you hear about ISI are true. ISI has worked very hard to earn the reputation that it deserves. It has always been challenging place to work, but over the last 2+ years it has become miserable. I was a CSR for over 5 (which made me a fossil) years and the ride had to come to an end before all the things that are truly important in my life were damaged beyond repair. In my 5 years I had 8 different CSM's, all of which were demoted, fired or quit. Obviously making the choice for me to go into management there an easy one. If you choose to not express that you would like to be a manager, start the stopwatch. CSM's are directly evaluated on the number of people under them they "develop" and promote. Ultimately making you now, useless to that CSM. Every new CSM wants a team full of people willing to sacrifice everything to move up a level. Which does wonders for your relationships in your accounts? You are not the first rep they've seen nor will you be their last. Your job will be used as leverage the moment you start trending below your quota whether you achieve quota or not. Three day ride alongs that begin at 6am and end well after 6pm are routine and will all claim they are not micromanagers. I can best describe the ride along as a three day interrogation in which the terms, "belief system", "Un-coachable", and my personal favorite, "professional maturity" will be used describe why you are not succeeding by Intuitive's standards. All these terms were used to describe reps of the year for those who think it was just me. This ride along will ultimately be followed up with a field ride report letter that your CSD and AVP are copied in on and it is filled with paragraph after paragraph of negative criticism on how you run your territory, or whatever your CSM feels will make them look like they are desperately trying to save your career and make you a better CSR... even if they have never done your job. If you are able to meet or exceed your increasingly unrealistic quota, you will receive no sincere thank you from anyone. You will, however, be rewarded with a 20-30% increase in your next quota and the thankless process will start all over again. This pressure forces everyone to sandbag cases to make sure that they do not go over quota by too much and it also forces cases to be made up just to make quota. Simple as that. That is how you survive. The only one who truly cares about your survival is you. While there are extremely talented sales professionals within Intuitive, the majority are never there long. They are replaced by people who are only out to climb the corporate ladder as quickly as possible. People that follow orders without question from someone one level higher no matter how ridiculous and blatantly useless the request is. So to all of you who are looking to get in, take it from someone who survived longer than most, it isn't worth it. I promise. Anyone with more than 4 years experience at ISI who feels different, I would love to hear from you!! To my fellow CSR's who are still going to bed each night with a pit in their stomachs, wondering how they are supposed to train 3 GYN's per quarter when the only GYN's left in your territory you wouldn't let touch you with a Qtip let alone a knife, there is life outside of ISI! It is sweet I assure you. So let ISI implode on its own, get out while you still have a spouse that loves you, kids that know you and a soul you haven't sold.
Wow that felt good!
