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Barracuda Networks

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Barracuda Networks reviews

3.3

49% would recommend to a friend

(741 total reviews)
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Rohit Ghai

75% approve of CEO

38% positive business outlook

Barracuda Networks has an employee rating of 3.3 out of 5 stars, based on 741 company reviews on Glassdoor which indicates that most employees have a good working experience there. The Barracuda Networks employee rating is in line with the average (within 1 standard deviation) for employers within the Information Technology industry (3.9 stars).

Reviews by job title

741 reviews
3.0
Aug 3, 2015

Think "Short-Term"

Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

During my first week at Barracuda, a former employee told me to “treat Barracuda like grad school”. Though it felt more like high school than grad school, he was right. You get thrown into the mix and you either sink or swim. It’s a great learning experience if you make the best of it, and you make a lot of friends along the way. Problem is, the products are garbage and management has no idea what they’re doing. What’s worse is all the praise goes to the outside sales force when the true talent is in the inside sales team. Turnover is high for both teams mainly due to disorganization and realization that they can make more money elsewhere. If you’re new to the industry and you’re looking for the experience, then Barracuda is just the place for you. You get the experience you need and then you move on. Barracuda is notorious for their high turnover and they do very little about it, which is probably how they make their money (especially since the stock isn’t doing so hot). If you’ve been in the game for a while, you might want to look elsewhere, although if you just want to leverage your role at Barracuda to another employee, that works too. Working at Barracuda is like dating a new girl. When you first meet her and get to know her, she’s amazing and all you want to do is spend time together. You party and attend lots of fun events and everything seems right. But as you both settle down and get more comfortable, the facade of perfection wears away. Her expectations are way too high (no less than 10-hour work days), she starts monitoring your every move (making you clock in/out of your phone to monitor how much time you spend at your desk), and she gives very little in return (paid 20% less than the market). Eventually you realize how unhappy you are and dump her. It was a learning experience, and you had some good times. Now you know what not to look for. To sum it all up, get what you need and then leave.

Cons

1. Disorganized sales cycle. 2. impossible to get in touch with Product Management. A lot of time is spent training the sales team to make every customer a "Barracuda Shop", but not enough resources are available to make the products actually work. 3. There is no real career path.

1.0
Feb 12, 2014
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

Barracuda was one of the best places to work. It was actually rated one of the top 25 companies to work for years ago, however things have changed, for the worst. Barracuda USED to be a great place to work and learn while having a good time with some of the best people around. But those days are in the past. The only pros of working here now are the free lunches, although I'd rather see a pay raise then have them feed me.

Cons

Where do I begin? First off, they have no value in their employees at all. The company expects you to invest your time and energy to help them be successful, but the company does not invest in their employees no matter how hard you work or how long you worked there. They will spend ridiculous amounts of money on entertainment to make it seem like things are great and fun when they should really be using that money to give pay raises to their hard working employees. Everyone talks about it, and would rather have a raise then attend a lavish parties and events. The morale is down, everyone is unhappy, and a lot of people have been leaving but the company does not care as long as they are making profits. I guess this is what happens when you go public and it's time to start looking for a new job.

2.0
May 9, 2017
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

The location and parking are probably the best pros to working here. Dead center of downtown Ann Arbor with basically free parking that you can use 24/7 is very attractive to the youngsters. If you are a foodie, this is the place to be. The Ann Arbor location has some decent products to work on and there are actually some interesting and challenging problems to solve. This pro is kind of a con: Barracuda is a decent place for your first or second job - definitely a stepping stone in your career. It's a good place to get in and get some nitty gritty software engineering experience. It's also a good place to learn about typical failures of a workplace. Once you learn these things, you grow from them and move onto something better.

Cons

I'll start with the management here - all the way from the executives in HQ to the directors in Ann Arbor. Not only is it factual, but it is obvious that these people have never had any other jobs nor have they ever been a manager before, nor have they been a manager of managers. The people managers here were promoted to management from individual contributors (IC) because they were probably good at writing code. Writing code does not translate to leading teams. Once they were promoted, they never got any mentorship or formal training. This shows in the poor planning of projects, the really poor professional skills, and really terrible manager-to-IC relationships. Also, I'd love to get an explanation of how someone with a few years of experience goes from an IC to manager to director of engineering within 3 years? It's just not realistic in the 'real world.' "Work/Life Balance" is not a thing here. Work will always take precedence to life at Cuda. You are basically on call 24-7-365. If there's a fire - you're getting called by your manager. If there's a customer issue - you're getting called by your manager. If there's a question your manager has about something he can look up in JIRA - you're getting a call from your manager. If you just had a baby and you took all the PTO you had to get some time with your kid and there's a small bug in your code - you're getting a call from your manager. Also, the benefits are a complete joke here. The worst PTO policy I have ever seen, and this is coming from a Silicon Valley company. Good luck having a significant other or a family. Hopefully, nobody gets sick in your family and you can't come into the office... you will hear about it from your manager. The 401k matching is pretty bad, as well. The tech stack that the products are written on are a disaster. The mentality at cuda is to ship it first and fix it later. That means fixing it later never comes, because you're constantly shipping it. This is not a place to learn best practices. Also as an aside - it says something when the founders of the company that is acquired (Bitleap) leave their product (Backup) behind and go work somewhere else. The stock took a nosedive a year ago and the company was put on the 'tightening the belts' budget. The stock recently also took a decent plunge. This is now two years in a row that the stock suffers pretty badly after the annual financials go out. HR is also a mess here. One person didn't get paid their full salary for an entire year because of something they messed up during hiring. Another person was told they were hired on as a senior when in fact they were hired on as junior. For about a year there was no HR present in the Ann Arbor office at all - letting all the bros run wild with their foosball, head butting, and borderline sexual harassment (if not actual sexual harassment) comments. Also this: there is no diversity at Cuda. This is extremely surprising for a company in Ann Arbor. I would say the office is over 90% white male in the 20-30 age group. I can count the women in the entire office on my two hands, and the women of color on one hand. Last but not least: the lights do not come on in this office. There are a select few people who like to work in the dark, so they are loud enough to make it happen for an office of 200+ people (see first paragraph about management).

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Glassdoor has 785 Barracuda Networks reviews submitted anonymously by Barracuda Networks employees. Read employee reviews and ratings on Glassdoor to decide if Barracuda Networks is right for you.