Trying to project out my year, and I don’t think I’m going to make any/much money. Been in the job a year, have a young family. Do I change industries? Company size? How do I find a tech company with good work/life balance? Is a startup the play?
My company provides infrastructure / APIs for real-time website experiences (voice, chat, video). It's cool tech and we're pretty well-established in certain verticals - but my team is really struggling. Maybe 15% of the team is hitting quota (estimate)? So it's pretty rough right now overall. Not to say that I'm not responsible for my own performance - but tbh the goal is starting to feel pretty unattainable. I have 3 opps that I'm hoping will close in Q2 - but even if all 3 close that only covers a little more than 30% of my number... so not looking great. There are some reps that are successful. From talking with them it seems like a lot of their bookings come from a few large deals that are more common in their verticals than they are in mine.
Lol no such thing as “work/life balance” in most startups. You’ll be writing your own onboarding docs and chasing PMs for roadmap timelines. That said… if you land at a startup with actual product-market fit, and you’re early, the upside can be wild. Just don’t count on it if you need steady cash right now - which sounds like what you're looking for. Maybe look for a larger org with established training (and high quota attainment)?
You need to break down WHY you don't think you'll make much money. Are others in the same role making money? Is nobody on the team making money? If other are, what are they doing differently than you? Is there a territory problem, are you trained, is there a management problem, something else? Speak with those people doing well. If nobody is making money then it may be a capacity (too many reps) or a product issue and you should start passively looking to make a change. In parallel get a good understanding of what changes are coming from the company to determine if there's a path to improvement later this year as the company makes changes to improve things. Good luck. ✌️