Boiler Room 2.0 - Commercial Account Executive Samsara Employee Review

2.0
Oct 24, 2019
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

Great benefits. Offer preset RSU's to entry level positions. Amazing accelerators, if you can get there, but most of it is based off luck regarding inbound sales. Some of the managers do really care and try, but seem like they know they're being held to a standard their reps cannot reasonably attain.

Cons

Really tough work environment. It seems like the management team has some good intentions, but serious problems scaling because they lack experience in the roles they manage as they are today or just have their eyes set on the IPO. The commercial division is a micromanaged pressure cooker, seemingly with the only purpose being to drive customer acquisition numbers for the eventual IPO valuation. Most of the revenue for the company comes from the MM and Enterprise segments that seem much more normal - quarterly & attainable quotas as well as B2B sales. The product is also designed for those types of customers. The commercial segment is a B2C sale with copious cold calling to recycled and misinformation laden accounts imported from DOT filings. It's essentially like trying to sell retail over the phone to owners of businesses that do less than 5M rev/year. The position is really more of an outbound BDR position that carries a daily call quota and monthly revenue quota. Fully ramped quotas seemed unattainable and its not uncommon for more than half the reps to be tracking for or already on a PIP. One of the VP's claimed being on a PIP was a good thing and would help your career in a team meeting. The stipulations involved with selling the product make it very difficult for super small businesses/consumers to purchase - pricing/contract/etc. Senior management keeps an eye out for any "negativity" whatsoever and back channels to individual reps w/o their direct manager present about their respective colleagues. Senior management is also OK with presenting skewed data to try to justify the unfavorable positions reps find themselves in. The tension is palpable on a daily basis. The CEO seems like an intelligent/value driven person and I was personally really excited to join after the new hire week, but I guess he has no idea how the lower level sales departments function or is fine with it. It was close to the exact opposite of what I thought I signed up for based off the recruitment/interview process/company introduction.

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People, growth opportunities, work-life balance

Cons

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Pros

Innovative product, constantly growing the platform

Cons

Compensation doesn’t feel competitive for the workload and expectations of the role. Frequent annual changes—including territory realignments, account books, verticalization, and quota adjustments—create unnecessary disruption and make it difficult to build long-term customer relationships and pipeline. The company has grown rapidly, but account distribution hasn’t always kept pace with headcount, leaving many reps competing for limited opportunity and making OTE difficult to achieve consistently. The Team Lead role is one of the biggest pain points. Team Leads are expected to operate like frontline managers without the compensation or authority that comes with a management position. They carry a fully ramped quota while also traveling, mentoring new hires, leading office hours, answering rep questions, supporting onboarding, and taking on enablement responsibilities. While these leadership opportunities can be rewarding, they often come at the expense of selling time and make it significantly harder to hit quota.

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