Unfortunately even with the “pros” of working at Sweetwater it’s mostly a bad deal for you the employee and by extension the customer.
It starts with the hiring practices. I think calling them deceptive would be generous. You are told that Sweetwater only hires the best, whether that’s sales, musicianship, technical ability, etc. They use IQ and reasoning exams in the hiring process as well as a gear knowledge exam to determine what you know. You would think that means that they are selective about whom they hire. Nothing could be further from the truth. They will tell you that you really know your stuff and “big up” your ego to entice you to take the position. In reality it appears that they will hire anybody. In my time there I encountered not people who were absolutely clueless as to the MI world, or the music industry in general, but many many people who have no concept on how to behave professionally, treat others with respect, or manage to engage in basic hygiene. The latter being a serious issue if you end up having to share a cubicle or sit near one of these people. HR will tell you that you need to respect people’s differences regarding the hygiene issue which to me is absolutely insane. These are basic requirements of functioning not only in a professional environment, but in western society. You will be told and led to believe that you are joining a group of people that re passionate about the helping musicians, producers, engineers, and institutions achieve their goals but it’s just not the case, God forbid one of these people end up “helping” one of your customers on your day off, or if by some miracle you manage to be able to use a vacation day.
That brings us to the hours, and boy are there a lot. I won’t go into every little detail but this is not a 40-hour per week job. You will work a variety of shifts, 9-6, 10-7, 11-9, and sometimes as late as 10pm. It is not consistent and can change at any time which makes it difficult for your customers to know when you are available, not to mention if you are working with businesses or other institutions that operate during normal business hours. You need to conduct actual business and not just listen to someone bloviate about some esoteric topic for 20 minutes… Better come in before your shift starts and knock that out. If you want to be successful and make a living wage at this job you will be so busy during your day to day that you will HAVE to come in early and stay late just to cover all the administrative tasks that are required to keep yourself organized and productive, as well as the things that management requires of you that have little to no effect on your business. Lastly… You are required to attend 2 sales meetings per week, unpaid. There are 3 of these during your first year, and they are required while you are in training and are also unpaid during that time. They call these “sales meetings” but in reality they are product pitches from manufacturers. Manufacturers actually pay Sweetwater for the privilege of getting on stage from 7:30am to 9am to hock their wares. 90% of these meetings could be an email. Sure, sometimes there’s a famous musician, audio engineer, or maker (prs, benson, jhs) and that’s cool, but it’s not contributing to you getting paid. Oh and your shift doesn’t start until 11am but you’re scheduled for a 7:30 meeting. Tough. Sure you could leave and come back for those two hours, and do what? Go home and get an hour of sleep at most? You basically end up with a 12 hour day at least. These meetings provide little value with how big the sales engineer staff have become. I’m sure was great when it was 100 or 200 people, but now it’s basically someone reading a PowerPoint. Good luck using any vacation days by the way. The scheduling was so broken it made it nearly impossible to request time off. You were encouraged to submit for planned time off months to a year in advance. But why bother taking time off when you will have days if not a week of combing through emails, and basically taking care of all the clerical work that wasn’t done while you were gone. They recently tried to implement a new system for tracking time, PTO, and requesting days off, but it didn’t communicate with all the home grown systems so you couldn’t even get reliable data to ensure you were meeting the performance standards. It’s just a mess. The primary software used for sales, and customer management routinely goes down for extended periods of time, or becomes so slow that it’s unusable. This means everything grinds to a halt. Shipping, receiving, sales, guitar gallery, the repair shop, everything! What’s worse is that if something like this affects your customer, or your paycheck… Tough. Shipment of a large order didn’t make it out because of an outage? Might not see that commission for two weeks, or even worse… Might lose that customer, or provide a price adjust,ent because they didn’t get their shipment in time, That’s money out of your pocket because Sweetwater can’t maintain their internal systems.
How do you get paid? 100% commission. To be fair, you know this going in. To people who hustle and/or are used to sales this isn’t a big deal. It is unlimited earning potential, theoretically. This is one area where the company is incredibly deceptive during the interview and onboarding process, more on that in a bit. You get a percentage of the gross profit from whatever you sell. Gross profit being defined as cost + shipping + credit card transaction fees. Fair enough right? Well your percentage can get cut in half based on the amount of communication you’ve had with a customer. This is measured and tracked by the company and includes phone talk time, email, text, etc. I won’t go into specifics but if you have over 5000 customers in your name there is no way to keep up enough communication to the point where you will always get the full commission. This gets even trickier when your customer makes a purchase and you aren’t in the office. They will be assisted by another sales engineer who may or may not take a cut depending on how much time it eats up for them. There are a lot of dishonest people on the sales floor who will take large cut just for answering the phone, writing and invoice and charging a card. You can appeal and talk to your manager but that takes time out of your day, not to mention the fight the other person will undoubtedly put up is stressful, and your manager may or may not side with you. There are not real guidelines on this and you are at the mercy of someone’s subjective opinion regarding YOUR MONEY. It’s important to know also that returns take money from you. If you sell something and make $100 commission and that item gets returned, that commission is taken from you, this is also fair but not mentioned or talked about much in the onboarding process (interview stage). You will also lose out on the return shipping if you want to keep the customer, or if another sales engineer places the return for you they may not charge the proper amount for return shipping to offset the loss as is policy. There are a lot of areas where you have very little control or influence on your money and your business. During the interview and onboarding process they will tell you what the commission rate is, but they are being truthful, not factual. The employment agreement I signed stated a commission rate, but failed to mention that there are scenarios, as I explained above where that won’t be the rate. This is incredibly deceptive and should have been a red flag to me, but I’d already moved out here and leased an apartment etc.
Policy Changes and Systems Implementation. A catalyst for many people leaving the company has been recent changes to the way in which you are permitted to prospect for new business. It used to be that when a sales engineer left or changed positions their database of customers would be opened up for the rest of the sales floor to “prospect”. That is no longer the case, Sweetwater have severely restricted the manner in which you can go about prospecting for new business. What used to require thought and skill to sort through and search for customers that you wanted, who could work well for your business, has been reduced to a random lottery.
Your health. Long hours, lack of sleep, stressful environment, loud call center, poor ergonomics. These are just a few of things you will encounter regularly that can and will take a toll on your health as a Sweetwater employee. Now, you can improve on these to some degree, but it will cost you. The cubicles, desks and chairs provided to sales engineers are of terrible quality. They are in no way suitable when you are expected to work a job where you are seated most of the day. When I say poor quality by the way, I mean it. Bottom of the barrel got it for $20 off Amazon quality. You are permitted to upgrade your setup, but that’s on you. There is a cottage industry internally of people selling standing desks, chairs, and other nice to haves that in reality should be provided by the company. Other corporations I’ve worked for have alway provided these things for their employees, but I guess Sweetwater can’t afford it. There is a “gym” on site if you want to wake up early enough to get your reps in before the usual crowd shuffles in. There is a group who is there day in and day out who monopolize what little equipment there is. It’s crowded, nobody wipes equipment down, and the locker rooms, at least the one that I used (based on my sex) are absolutely filthy and disgusting. Just bring flip flops or slides lest you get a fungal infection. What about healthy eating? Well there is a diner on-site, but I wouldn’t eat there if I was concerned about my health. It’s basically a lot of garbage. GFS quality meats, nothing organic, everything is in a sauce or fried, no truly healthy options. It’s basically institutional level food dressed up to look like it’s decent, You get a discount, but it’s still more than one should pay for what you’re getting. There are options in coolers for when the diner is closed, but also just a lot of garbage. Lunchables, uncrustables, etc. You will also be paying tax on the food your purchase. Government taxes your check, Sweetwater taxes your meals. Most cafeterias in corporate America do not tax their employees, or they take the charges for your food out of your check pre-tax. Not Sweetwater. You swipe your badge and the price is deducted from your next check (only way to get the discount). So you pay tax on the food, and you’re taxed again when you actually get paid. Lastly, the sales floor. There are not many windows. If you’re unlucky enough to not be near one, enjoy the fluorescent lights. Want to block them, that’s on you to pay for a shield. One thing I absolutely could not believe is there were / are physically handicapped employees there forced to work on the upper level of the sales floor where the is no elevator access. Watching someone who can’t walk without the use of specialized crutches, or with other physical maladies struggle to get to their work area is heartbreaking. Elevator from the main floor out? Tough luck getting to your desk if you can’t use stairs. Sweetwater needs to do better.
So what about the location? Sweetwater is located at the intersection of a busy trucking route (makes sense) and a rural highway. The closest business are a couple of strip clubs down the street and a sketchy truck stop diner and motels which regularly host myriad crimes including murder. There is nothing close should you need to run an errand on your lunch. You can take a longer lunch at your discretion, but that eats into your money so ymmv. While there are nicer areas around Fort Wayne it is largely an impoverished and crime riddled community with a penchant for fireworks. Since I’ve been here (roughly a year and a half) there has been a shooting rampage and a stabbing at two local grocery stores. 3 shootings at the mall, and your daily violence and drug activity in most of the neighborhoods. There is 1 movie theatre (the other is getting renovated), no quality grocers or access to organic or non bio-engineered foods. The prominent chain has a monopoly on the area and good luck getting anything quality there. If you are used to having an organic grocer, a Whole Foods or similar you can forget it in Fort Wayne. You can however stop at the plentiful liquor stores, sex shops, strip clubs, and skeezy bars. Just remember when the hiring folks tout Fort Wayne’s affordable living it’s just a different way of saying no economic activity, which isn’t good for anyone.
In the end… If you value time off to pursue what you enjoy, or even to play your instrument, time with your family, a safe neighborhood with quality amenities, and an employer that values you and the work you do, you should look elsewhere. I don’t think that what Sweetwater has become is what Chuck Surack envisioned when he built it all those years ago. It certainly isn’t what it was when I began buying from my Sales Engineer. Now that Sam Ash is gone and Guitar Center is hanging by a thread I think Sweetwater will just become another Amazon where customer service goes to die.
