F5 Software Engineer reviews

3.8

60% would recommend to a friend

(153 total reviews)
avatar

Francois Locoh-Donou

67% approve of CEO

46% positive business outlook

Software Engineer employees have rated F5 with 3.8 out of 5 stars, based on 153 company reviews on Glassdoor. This indicates that most Software Engineer professionals have a good working experience there. F5 is rated in line with the average (within 1 standard deviation) by Software Engineer professionals compared to other employers within the Information Technology industry (3.9 stars).

Reviews by job title

153 reviews
3.0
Nov 3, 2013
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

Agree with most of the pros listed here: - The people at F5 are extremely talented, and fantastic to work with. - Small number of layers in the organization. Hard workers everywhere keeping everyone from feeling as though they are the only one rowing - F5 really values its engineers - Traffic handling code is amongst the most mature and interesting in the business. - Lots of latitude to work on what interests you

Cons

Agree with most of the cons already listed here: - F5 Struggles to keep its roots, and be open, flexible and pioneering while continually growing. - Very political upper management. Middle management does not care about employees - Salary, if negotiated well at hiring, can be competitive, otherwise you must leave the company and come back if you want to be paid fairly. The guy sitting next to you may be earning 10K more and be half as productive as you. - Growing pains right now impacting the organization can be frustrating and disruptive. - A lot of office politics in some groups, a lot of complex relationships, brothers, buddy, previous company co-workers. - Unrealistic expectations from VPs to come in evenings and weekends to meet unrealistic release goals made my management, only to cut features to make the release date. - Headquarter is located at Seattle. If you are working at their San Jose office, you will feel somewhat segregated. - Limited openness to new employees: Majority of attrition is from people who have been there less than a year. - Our stock is really hard to predict

3.0
Jun 12, 2008
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

Top ten reasons to work at F5: 1. Very smart engineers - the people there know their stuff. 2. Laid back atmosphere - not too much pressure - it sometimes get a bit busy during release time - but nothing crazy gets thrown at you. If your workload feels too high, you can always ask for help - and most of the time - get help. 3. Engineers rule and have a great deal of flexibility. 4. Don't need to waste your time writing crappy documents - documentation is for losers. 5. Flexible working hours - in fact - just don't show up at the office - work from home. 6. Great benefits - healthcare, 401k, commuting stipend. 7. Great location for the headquarters - near great restaurants, parks, seattle center. 8. They feed you every now and then. 9. Great christmas/holiday parties. 10. Free beer most fridays.

Cons

1. Pay raises are often dismal and disappointing - you're lucky or favored if you get anything above 4%. 2. Too much favoritism. The wrong people get promoted all the time for kissing butt ... but then again it's the same everywhere. This also applies to stock based compensation - many employees get nothing - others get a lot. 3. Most managers (bar a few) are clueless. Most managers don't have any idea on how the product works but they still attempt to lead you. 4. God help you if you join the test team. Most of the testers at F5 don't know what they are doing. If you manage to survive the test team long enough, you get promoted to become a manager. 5. Like with many companies, there's a pecking order and different sets of rules for different people. 6. Despite of what they say, it's not very easy to move between teams. 7. Don't expect too much feedback from managers/upper mgmt - most of the time they don't know what the employees under them are working on. 8. The company meetings/all hands meeting are a bore.

Viewing 151 - 153 of 153 Reviews

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