software engineer

account manager

intern

director

Bentley Systems

When I started with Bentley Systems I was really encouraged and motivated to advance through the company.  The company was focused on providing great products and services to our customers, they worked on expanding their portfolio to provide a comprehensive suite of applications to our users and focused on enhancing applications to better meet the needs of our customer base.

In the last two years, management is focused on increasing our profit margin by bullying customers into upgrading software on an unreasonable timeline.  As incentive to migrate customers, Bentley started charging more for deprecated software that is no longer supported, there is also an increased cost for the upgraded software.  Bentley is also discontinuing training and support for customers who are using old software, even when a customer requests assistance so that they can upgrade to the new software and bring old projects forward. Additionally there are no internal resources to deliver services that have been demanded by customers so they can upgrade their software.

The sales comp plan was designed to reduce commission payout to sales.   Sales is penalized for customers who do not overuse their licenses.  For example if in Q1 2018 and account went over their license usage they were billed for the overage.  If in Q1 2019 they did not overuse any software the account manager sees a negative in their comp report.  The comp plan is heavily favored to incentive sales to move products that are not even ready for production as well.  There was a mistake made to the comp plan which was not found until more than half way through the year.  It was only realized after sales enablement made an announcement that they would be increasing an incentive on a particular set of products.  This incentive was less than what was stated in the posted comp plan.  There was no apology for the confusion and it was just another blow to an already demoralized sales force (who are beginning to leave in droves)

There is no accountability within the organization, lots of finger pointing at the different product and sales teams and so many silos that it seems our product teams are duplicating effort with no tangible results.
I have lost faith in the products and services we provide to our customers and am not happy with the Company's overall treatment of our customer base

To start, I'd like to say that Bentley Systems was the perfect setup for a worker like me: high work ethic, but doesn't like to be micromanaged; the type of person who is given a project and delivers no matter what. Very little actual oversight and all the employees in IT operations, at all levels, are friendly and congenial. It feels very "chilled out" in comparison with other global enterprises. Managers will eat breakfast with underlings. Nobody feels inaccessible or unapproachable.

That doesn't always work for everybody. With the laid-backness and lack of oversight comes a lack of accountability; often progress moves at a snail's pace, with the 'process ownership football' being chucked around from team to team for weeks before a middle manager or director has to make a judgment call to grease the gears. 

It culminates in a 'bipolar' sort of culture, in the magnetic sense. There are two poles: the highly competent, hard workers who will help anybody on anything, going far out of their way and being relied on for any and everything--and the bare-minimum types, who, while knowledgeable in their own rights, just do what they're told and nothing more. Surprisingly, it works well for Bentley. They do really good work and the day-to-day feel of it is very comfortable.

A word of warning, if you have a payroll issue, it could take months to get it even addressed. I had issues in November which were only addressed in February, and then only addressed because I got a director involved. Personally, after everything I loved about this company at the beginning, having to constantly worry about whether I was getting paid correctly every 2 weeks left a sour taste in my mouth.

Worked at Bentley for almost fifteen years, and while my career took some weird twists over that time, I felt supported and valued, on the whole. The benefits were great (better healthcare than I've found at any other job), and the overall culture was pretty laidback. Very rarely did I feel like I didn't have a manager who supported or advocated for me and my team. 

My biggest frustration is the hypocrisy in how they want customers to upgrade to the latest version of their software while their own backend software is an old, decrepit, patchwork zombie limping along and struggling to keep up with changes in products and services. While there was good support from the people in the company, the internally-used software is badly outdated, and when I left, it didn't look like that would ever change. 

There can also be a bit of an us-vs-them mentality between teams which can make collaboration difficult. Back-end support doesn't realize the stress that the sales team is under to hit their targets, and sales doesn't realize how overworked the back-end support teams are. More empathy could go a long way.

Overall, very good company to work for and the bar by which I'll judge future employers.

Bentley provided me with a good mix of challenges accompanied by the training and resources to excel.  

I established Bentley's Global Strategic Account program.  In addition, I managed a team of sales, professional service, and application engineers.  Together, we were very successful in achieving our assigned goals and enjoyed an excellent team environment.

Bentley's culture is a workplace filled with very competent personnel who are willing to pitch-in and do whatever they can to make you successful.  They promote STEM initiatives through both employee involvement and company funding.

The most difficult part of my job was getting used to the seemingly endless changes in how we organized our teams for selling.  The constant changes were difficult for our customers to understand and interrupted our sales momentum.

Bentleys management was very supportive and provided ample opportunity for growth and development.  They supported training and professional affiliations as a way to broaden my industry knowledge.

Bentley is now a very known company in the AEC software industry, so working here will earn you a brand name. But be careful which area you are getting yourself into. Civil and Structural related fields are in high demand, and they are leading the industry, but other areas will take you nowhere. 

People here are mostly friendly, although some rotten cases are there as well. 

You can work from home while at Bentley, which is really great. But now-a-days you can do so in many technology companies.

Base Pay here is at least 20 grand less than the industry- with average benefits, standard 401K and average health benefits. Incentives are better, but does not make up for the less base pay.

Middle Management is very poor. Although many of them are technically savvy people, they have no clue what they are doing. Upper management is better, but seems out of touch with the front liners. 

Overall this is not a great career progressing company, but it is a good place to work if you want flexibility to work from home and keep work-life balance.

Used to be a good company to work for but new layers of management are being constantly introduced. Managers get fired or leave. The company started to hire employees located abroad as it's cheaper. They hire people with zero experience in the industry to manage professionals. They like "yes man" type of employees. They tell you how lucky you are to work for them and if you don't show enthusiasm you are fired. They encourage you to misrepresent truth to the customers. Employees are not happy and live with anxiety. They introduce crazy performance goals and threthen people if they don't generate the numbers they want. They can get rid of you very easily. Lack accountability is another problem. They are wasting resources by hiring wrong people who generate numbers but not do the job right. They created a vicious circle of poor quality that is haunting their products. They are trying to fix problems by throwing numbers on them but not actually fixing them because nobody can afford to take time and properly address the root causes. Everyone is obsessed with satisfying the metrics.

I loved what I did and with whom I worked at Bentley in Greenwood Village, Colorado. We came together as one team and tackled highly challenging tasks with tight deadlines. I started as a technical writer and eventually performed the job of three employees.  I was responsible for Technical Writing, Software Testing, Instructional Design, and onsite Technical Training. I felt appreciated and supported by my local coworkers, however, the corporate office (HQ) refused to acknowledge my value year after year, with no promotions and no pay increases, although those around me received praise and raises.
I left only because I was frustrated with HQ and received a better offer from ION-GX Technology. Otherwise, I would still be there.

Bentley is the global leader dedicated to providing architects, engineers, constructors, and owner-operators with comprehensive software solutions for sustaining infrastructure. Each solution is designed to ensure that information flows between processes and project team members to fully leverage interoperability and collaboration. These solutions provide users with the capabilities they need to increase cost efficiencies and maximize the return on their investments in innovation, empowering them to design, build, and operate better-performing infrastructure, which has been Bentley’s mission for the past 29 years. Bentley sustains the infrastructure professions by helping to leverage information technology, learning, best practices, and global collaboration – and by promoting careers devoted to this crucial work.

The sales department is not a good place to be in this firm.  Commission structure that is confusing and changes frequently without notice, along with your territory.  You won't make any real money until the end of the year if and only if you surpass 100% quota.  You spend a lot of time building a pipeline and then have it swiped away and switched to something else. Broad, massive, sweeping knee jerk reaction changes take place every year without intelligent thought or process applied.  Good old boy mentality runs rampant throughout the organization.  For a software company with progressive products there seems to be a glaring lack of progressive management and sound business principals.  Who is steering this ship?

Managed the top Municipal accounts by implementing strategic account plans, focusing on individual customer centric goals and needs and identified growth opportunities,

Learned in-depth knowledge about the sales process, customer-centric business process and Solution Selling techniques.

Co-workers were all great and a joy to work with.

The hardest part of the job was dealing with the annual maintenance contracts and the legal department within the organization.

The most enjoyable part of the job was being exposed to new and cutting edge infrastructure technology.

Top Job Titles	Average Salary
Software engineer 16 salaries reported	$22.69 per hour
Account manager 4 salaries reported	$82,750 per year
Intern 3 salaries reported	$20.33 per hour
Director 3 salaries reported	$183,333 per year

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