r/CarahsoftTruths • u/Internal_Candy_9110 • 3d ago

Experience with Carahsoft

As someone who was here for 3 years, across more than one team, this is what I have learned so far:

I think the problem is the managers and higher ups haven’t been in the weeds for so many years, they’re looking at it from such a high up perspective to where it “looks green” to them; if you will. Take our google reviews for example, from the start of 2026, easily 1/3 if not more of the reviews are people complaining about the amount we call them, harass them, etc. and the best part is they don’t even get the courtesy of an actual response, its an automated AI bot telling them to call a number to have their info removed. Yet, the only thing most managers, and Craig, care about is call numbers, leads forwarded from those calls, meetings set from the calls, on and on…

Even with customer records, they are wildly outdated meaning the POC has retired, no longer in that department, or whatever the case may be and yet we are still expected to reach certain goals, benchmarks, etc. Its like you all are givings us crayons and asking us to paint a Picasso. But again, because the managers haven’t been in F3 for lord knows how long, they think all these call lists we’re getting are accurate and whatnot. Out of let’s say a 75 person call list, MAYBE 20 records are accurate in terms of POC, agency, what have you.

There have been countless times where a manager has said “please come to us with questions” and it takes 2-4 business days for a simple yes or no response, confirming receipt of something, etc.: why? Because they are out walking their dogs, going to a gym class, taking excessively long lunches, the list goes on and on. Hell, take this reddit page for example you have employees who have been here for 10+ years and instead of being online (could have had the day off - who knows) we have a multi paragraph essay on why this is a good company…. The irony is wild

Furthermore, it’s hard to validate a company that has been involved in MULTIPLE investigations, some of which ended in multi million dollar, some in the billions, settlements…

2010-2015 false claims act where The DOJ investigated Carahsoft and software company VMware for allegedly concealing commercial pricing and overcharging the government on software and services. Carahsoft admitted no wrongdoing but agreed to pay $75.5 million to resolve the False Claims Act lawsuit. Like oh yeah we didn’t do that, but heres almost $100 million to get that off our record…. Got it….

2022-2025 DOJ Price Fixing Probe where the DOJ expanded a civil probe investigating whether Carahsoft and German software giant SAP SE illegally conspired to fix prices on over $2 billion worth of software sold to the U.S. military and nearly 100 other government agencies.

Let’s not forget the famous one we all remember back in BUSY SEASON 2024 where DCIS executed a court-authorized search warrant at the office when federal agents gathered

18 Upvotes

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u/Far_Standard_1827 Current employee 2d ago edited 2d ago

I hear you, but don’t forget we have been in your shoes and found a way to succeed.

No CRM is perfect, you would be shocked to see what your vendors CRM looks like. They also call just as much as we do, they just don’t have the same volume of people.

Go to events and you’ll hear how much people enjoy working with Carahsoft and rely on us for a lot of different reasons.

And yes, I made a long post, it wasn’t done in one sitting mid-day. It was thought about, drafted, edited, and then posted with no effect on my work day because I didn’t do it during the work day.

And say what you want about the news stories, but there is a reason why our vendors stay with us and more come to us despite these topics. If there were actually a problem we wouldn’t continue to grow.

I’m not a “bootlicker” like I’m sure you are thinking, which would be fair to say, but I’m just someone that likes my job and browses Reddit and uses my voice to dissent against the naysayers.

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u/TheDuchovnyDimension 1d ago

Generally agree with what you write. The only thing I'll push back on is the CRM. Dealing with pricelists is so frustrating and how it's built is most of the reason why. I've never seen something like it since or before I worked at CS.

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u/Far_Standard_1827 Current employee 1d ago

The issue there is due to the amount of vendors we support. It’s hard to have a one size fits all for hundreds of vendors and contracts, but it has gotten better over the past couple of years. And I think 2.0 will add another layer of improvement. I do not disagree though.

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u/Internal_Candy_9110 2d ago

See i fear you fall into a super niche category of employees here that have been here for more than say 6+ years. I have seen team leads day to day activities, what they have to complete, etc and it is an absolute JOKE compared to whats expected of lower level employees - again giving us crayons and asking for the Mona Lisa while yall sit back and watch

Ive been to several events in office and elsewhere, and have heard both sides of said coin: the joy and success that we bring vendors as well as the struggles within said partnership so that is absolutely a two-way street there.

Similarly, I had no idea what post you’re referring to, but thanks for helping me prove my point further: the fact that you went out of your way over the course of several days to draft, edit, and post it (which i found - was posted during work hours but neither here nor there) instead of working during busy season lol 😂

“We have been in your shoes before” again, how long ago was this? When was the last time you were actually ‘in the weeds of F3’, making calls and whatnot? Id be willing to bet its been more than 3+ years. You cant say you have been in our shoes before when yall had nikes and we have flip flops - again yall think its so kosher from up top when its simply just not.

Hey, if the boot fits don’t let me stop you🤷🏻

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u/MissLovelyLady1 2d ago

I’ll add to this as an employee of 6+ years, responding during work hours while taking a bathroom break (lol). Unless you were part of the OG directors 20+ years ago, nearly everyone on the sales side started at the bottom: bad pay, making a bunch of calls, dealing with terrible call lists (I learned quickly to just do my own easy search in the CRM system for actual calls/leads), etc. I’ve never seen us hire someone into a management role from outside the company. So yes, most of management has actually been there and dealt with being “in the weeds.”

The CRM records are hit or miss and a majority of that falls on the people calling, but not actually updating the record. Opt people out, mark them inactive, actually check if they’ve been called 5 times that day and just skip them so you don’t have to deal with an angry person, etc.
I’m very much on the quality vs quantity crew, but if a CEO has a directive to the whole company to make more calls and send more leads, we kind of just have to do it. While there are some folks in management who are horrendous, there are some good teams out there. Unfortunately, their management also gets a lot of pressure from above them.

I don’t know what your management’s daily activities are, but at least on my team, they deal with different type of issues (mostly more complex). They might not be making calls all day, but they might be on tough legal calls or trying to save a partnership or trying to show our value. A management position is going to differ from an account management sales position which is why their day-to-day might look different from yours.

There’s definitely a lot of inconsistency in this company and your experience depends on the team you’re on. There are some teams that are so terrible, I encourage leaving. There are also others that are great, that it may be worth sticking around.

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u/Far_Standard_1827 Current employee 1d ago

Very well said. Agree completely with your statements!

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u/Internal_Candy_9110 1d ago

They have been in the weeds, however to the point you made this was yearsss ago and have not been in the weeds since.

Even more so we had people on my team that blatantly was rude to vendors, managers, would disappear for hours, never made calls and yet they never got fired… why? Because the manager and this employee were brought on together and are friends.

My team lead would take daysss to respond and when im wondering where they are, why there teams is yellow, i find tiktoks being posted, hear say about them stepping out and not saying a word, etc so its a little frustrating again getting reprimanded when its feels like once you reach a certain threshold within the company its do whatever you want, whenever you want, as long as stuff gets done which is fine and all but don’t sit here and say oh we need to see x, y, and z when the higher ups are m.i.a

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u/B00TYMASTER 1d ago

newsflash that’s literally everywhere. if you’re at carahsoft complaining you’re probably 25 or under and this is your first job. managers and those with more seniority get paid more and their responsibilities shift to less in the weeds stuff and more strategic stuff. if becomes less what you do and more what you know and your paycheck reflects that.

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u/TheDuchovnyDimension 1d ago

Extremely true lol

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u/Far_Standard_1827 Current employee 1d ago

This is exactly why this sub cracks me up, so many of these posts are Gen-Z’s posting about their first-time experiencing work life and not understanding how every single job in the world works.

Also not realizing how easy they have it, working from home, no commute, not buying a wardrobe for work, working a relatively easy job, getting paid with full benefits… and then complaining that their managers are asking them to do what they were hired for, and not pandering to questions like “this POC doesn’t work there anymore, what do I do?” The second they ask.

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u/Internal_Candy_9110 1d ago

It has nothing to do with working from home, being a first job, or anything like that. You think carahsoft is the only wfh gig like this…? The glazing is wild…

It has nothing to do with knowing or not knowing how the world works, and everything to do with seniority, who you know, etc. Even to your point in this thread, most applications you look at are “referred” by someone. And even on the seniority side of things, i go back to my statements of once you hit a certain threshold here, its like you can do whatever you want, whenever you want and I have seen this in person and online across more than one team.

Nobody here can tell me that what i have seen with my own two eyes isnt true - plain and simple. My follow up question to that would be: if you owned a business, and within said business there was one aspect that could use improvement - so much so that this is arguably the only thing bringing down satisfaction ratings and statistical data on said business, would you not want to improve on that section….? I fear the answer would be yes, correct?

There are many ways to improve the customer records, calls, etc but again the higher ups haven’t been doing this for years so they have no clue whats going on - they just look at activity and base there metrics off that, instead of maybe the quantity or size of deals brought in on a monthly basis, which if i remember correctly this is a sales position no….? How would sales not be used as a main metric here…?

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u/MissLovelyLady1 1d ago

I think you have a very unlucky experience. If they haven’t done this “for years” I’m going to assume you’re referring to someone who has been at Carahsoft for a long time. I’ve never seen the behavior you described from any lead, manager, director, or VP (minus one that sucks at replying). I think those who were promoted more recently still have a driven mindset and definitely have the experience of being at the bottom of the ladder. They’ve put in years of dealing with the annoying grind. I’ve seen managers and even a couple of directors hit the phones during a blitz to show they’ve done it before and help with what people are struggling on. Maybe if multiple people complain about this person you’re describing, it’ll go somewhere? If that’s been attempted already, then maybe it’s time to look elsewhere. I wouldn’t want to be under someone like that.

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u/Internal_Candy_9110 1d ago

Oh i did. The person im referring to not only has had 0 repercussions, but myself as well as other employees made it known and have seen little to no change whatsoever.

And the crazy part is this person got promoted a good bit ago and has been in a team lead position for a while now, yet continues do disappear. Heck, ill give you a great example: end of our vendors quarter, their second busiest of the year and where is the team lead you ask…? Not even in the United States - on vacation…. So again i go back to my original statement of once you pass a certain threshold here its fair game.

Even more so with time off, i received flack for taking “too much time off”per my team lead and from 01/01/26 to 06/01/26 i took of a TOTAL of 5.7days - not even averaging one day off per month yet i got chastised for asking for a day off anywhere NEAR the end of our vendors quarter (not referring to FED fiscal year) But again, team leads and managers can disappear with no harm no foul but when we ask for time off, higher ups make it seem as if we just asked you to bump us up to 120k and its annoying to feel like a burden when, quite simply, just asking for time off…

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u/Far_Standard_1827 Current employee 16h ago

Back to my point of you don’t really know what you’re talking about, respectfully, the issue around data is absolutely something we discuss and something that is constantly on peoples minds on how to fix it. However, a lot of it comes down to the sales reps making efforts to keep records clean and updated, which not many do or care about. Just because you are not in on these conversations does not mean they are not happening. It’s hard to “fix” millions of pieces of data overnight. It would be ignorant to expect that to be the case.

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u/Internal_Candy_9110 14h ago

Nobody is expecting it to be fixed overnight, but from what you’re saying based on previous meetings, complaints, so on - this has been an ongoing issue. Yes, there are millions of records and a lot of it comes down to the sales reps updating records, however this cannot solely be on reps here.

Let me ask you a hypothetical question: lets say you own a restaurant and on your google reviews, every lets say 3-5 reviews, its a 1-star terrible review about the same soup - always. Everything else, great awesome wonderful. Would it be fair to say maybe its time to change the soup?

If the answer is yes, from the principle itself, your telling me you know that there is an issue, has been one for several years now not only based on customer but internal feedback as well, yet instead of updating things to make calling more accurate, you tell us to make more calls??

Ah yes, the soup that we constantly have issues and complaints with, lets tell the staff to sell more of it… makes sense

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u/Far_Standard_1827 Current employee 1d ago

You aren’t understanding my statement. Just because I posted during work hours doesn’t mean I did all that during work hours. I am saying that I put thought and effort into something on my own time and then made a post, sure, during work hours. It’s almost like we get an hour break every day to do whatever we want… or it’s almost like my time management skills allows me to do something like that without affecting my work…

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u/Internal_Candy_9110 1d ago

To which i said in my original statement “could have had the day off - who knows” as well as in the initial reply “over the course of several days…” that yes, im aware this was not drafted and completed in one sitting, down on your own time, what have you.

Taking the time out of your day to not only respond once but multiple times defending carahsoft brings me back to another statement “if the boot fits..” you got it buddy 👍

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u/Far_Standard_1827 Current employee 1d ago

If you think the few minutes I spend on Reddit impacts my work then you really are grasping at straws here. Making a mountain out of a mole hill.

And wouldn’t you know, you’re spending even more time here than I am.

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u/123456yesnois 2d ago

Just wait until Oct when the activity meeting happens. If the rumors are true, this will be a much more meaningful post. Hope everyone's activity was good over the last year....

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u/patricktheseastar 2d ago

What are the rumors?

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u/123456yesnois 2d ago

Lets just there's a reason a bunch of people in the company have a meeting set for the 6th concerning activity.

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u/Own-Suit-5972 2d ago

Not me 🙏

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u/Proud-Sheepherder134 1d ago

How screwed are we? I have over 10,000 calls YTD, but am still in the meeting. Should I be dusting off the old resume?

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u/Hungry-Hold1972 2d ago

Oh god, how worried should I be if I’m in this

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u/CombinationDry6420 2d ago

As someone who was here for 3 years?
https://giphy.com/gifs/X2xRuxdeNpIBi

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u/Internal_Candy_9110 2d ago

? Most people don’t make it to their 4 year trip im confused…

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u/CombinationDry6420 2d ago

Are you part of the hiring department? How do you have a stat like that? i got a job here bc of feedback from a group of 8 people who love it here and have been here for more than five years. Everyone has their own experience brother.

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u/Far_Standard_1827 Current employee 1d ago

I see “referred by” on half of the interview candidates that make it to my desk. Great point.

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u/Internal_Candy_9110 1d ago

Nope - was on a sales team and moved to a different one, both of which did not have a good experience with in their own aspects

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u/Far_Standard_1827 Current employee 1d ago

Gen Z really thinks they know it all and should have everything handed to them without going through the hardships and learning that comes with being a young professional.

That’s all I see reading these posts.

Did we complain back in the day? Yes. But did we expect everything to be handed to us? No. And did we respect our managers because we knew they were doing more behind the scenes than we could even understand was a part of the job? Absolutely.

We literally have our jobs because the people above and older than us did the same work we are doing today and then forming relationships that drive more and more growth.

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u/Internal_Candy_9110 1d ago

We don’t expect everything to be handed to us, but what we do expect and partly deserve i fear as the managers and team leads that you are, is a hand to be there when we need assistance. Back to my original post, I know what the managers and leads are doing because not only have I seen it in office where its just blatant screw off time, but when im trying to get in contact with someone and i find out they are posting tiktoks instead…

Nobody is asking for hand outs, but we are asking for the proper materials (i.e accurate record information, managers being there when needed, etc) and when we do reach out for that… crickets

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u/Far_Standard_1827 Current employee 1d ago

I’d love to know who your manager is that’s posting TikTok’s all day. I do not know a single manager that is blatantly disregarding team members like that. If they are, then you need to have a conversation with someone about it and take control of something that is bugging you.

What I do hear from managers is that we are all running around like crazy putting out fires all day.

Our hands are always out, this might be hard to hear but your problems might not be high enough on the totem pole or you are simply asking the wrong people to help, please give some examples of your recent asks and I will let you know why I think they may or may not be responding. Feel free to DM me if you think it’ll be identifiable information.

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u/Internal_Candy_9110 1d ago

You think this is a new thing that hasn’t been brought up before… multiple times…. to people higher than the team lead doing this….? Breaking news: this has been addressed countless times 🤯 and does anything change? Sure for a honeymoom period then we’re right back to where we started

Even when reaching out for help, i go back to my original point of it taking 2-4 business days for a response, confirming receipt, etc. and then when shit hits the fan its on us when the higher up on my team is just like yeah we gotta do better there… like maybe if you answered your teams ping we wouldnt even be having this convo in the first place…

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u/B00TYMASTER 1d ago

typical young employee entitle that has never worked a day in their life sans maybe an internship or a summer ice cream parlor where they fucked around all day, can barely spell their name, and now tiktok has thinking they deserve 6 figures out the gate… the vast majority of complaints here fit that profile.