The Path to AE

The internal route varies by industry, especially when employer size is considered.

The chart ranks industries separately for smaller and larger employers. A point to the right of 50% means internal promotion was more common than changing employer among people observed reaching AE. This does not measure the chance of promotion within one year; that would require the full starting cohort for each industry.

Year-one odds are less than half of the eventual observed promotion share.

Each row starts with every SDR in that industry and employer-size group, whether or not they became an AE. Orange shows the share reaching AE within 12 elapsed months; the darker comparison shows the share observed reaching AE at any point. Rows are alphabetical, not a league table, and known sports-title artifacts are removed.

The first sales promotion is usually faster than later senior moves.

Each row describes one title-to-title move and now states the number of people behind it. The dot is the median time in the role before the promotion; the line covers the middle half of people. Wider lines mean people had more varied timelines, even when the medians look similar.

State-to-state differences are smaller than the variation inside each state.

The chart separates smaller and larger employers so company size does not disappear inside a state average. The dot gives the typical path; the line shows how wide the middle range is. Location alone does not explain the full difference.

People inside the same industry often have very different timelines.

The dot makes industries easy to compare, but the horizontal line is equally important. When those lines overlap, the data does not support a simple claim that one industry is always faster than another.

Time to promotion rises with employer size, but only gradually.

The smallest-employer median is 9 active SDR months and the largest-employer median is 14. The internal-promotion percentage printed beside each row adds the other half of the story: larger employers tend to take longer, but they also promote internally more often.

Company growth changes the route more clearly than it changes the timing.

Most measured growth groups have a 12-month median, while faster-growing companies show a higher internal-promotion share. Growth describes the employer, not the person. Records without a usable company-growth value are excluded from this view.

The pay view is a separate job-market snapshot, not an outcome from the career cohort.

The view now separates advertised base salary from OTE and shows the record count behind every bucket. The $97,500 AE and $72,500 SDR base-salary headlines come from the all-posting role overview. The state comparison uses known-location AE postings only; limited compensation disclosure can affect every estimate.