Guidewire reviews

4.0

78% would recommend to a friend

(1,472 total reviews)
avatar

Mike Rosenbaum

90% approve of CEO

70% positive business outlook

Guidewire has an employee rating of 4.0 out of 5 stars, based on 1,472 company reviews on Glassdoor which indicates that most employees have a good working experience there. The Guidewire employee rating is in line with the average (within 1 standard deviation) for employers within the Information Technology industry (3.6 stars).

Reviews by job title

1K reviews
3.0
May 15, 2014

Not what it was

Anonymous employee
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

Company has many happy customers and many people enjoy working at Guidewire Work life balance good for development

Cons

Guidewire's technology stack is horribly out of date, the newer version of the software while solving some problems is poorly implemented and development within it is very slow. If you work at Guidewire for any period of time the skills you develop will not be transferable to another employer due to the fact Guidewire has their own language (gosu) which has some interesting features but is only used at Guidewire. They also use their own persistence framework and web ui platform. The web ui platform (PCFs) is one of the weakest areas in the technology stack. This was improved with the latest release but still not something which most devs will enjoy using. The services part of the business has some very dedicated employees but some decisions in the past year including laying off several new PS staff recently hired caused many to question how dedicated the company is to this part of the business. It appears the idea is to outsource as much as this work as possible. The impression was also conveyed internally that PS is more or less a necessary evil and that what the company is really about is selling software. There has been some back peddling on this as of late but the damage was already done in terms of morale of many PS staff. The collegial environment everyone talks about still exists but is definitely waning.

5.0
May 14, 2014
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

The head of engineering is smart, honest, and a nice guy. He's genuinely open to input from anyone. I saw him act on complaints at both minor and significant levels.

Cons

The product teams are starting to communicate / collaborate a bit better, but it's still a mess. There is a long way to go. Also a recent change in source control seems like it could have been implemented better. It'll be all good in the long run though - mistakes happen and transitions are hard. I do hope we learn and the next change with major impact on developers is better planned & gets more resources.

1.0
May 10, 2014

Slippery slope

Anonymous employee
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

1. Good work life balance for most in dev. Many work <40 hour week 2. Relaxed environment for junior engineers as their managers have no stake in project delivery 3. Long lunch breaks, flexible hours, wfh days

Cons

1. Overpowered project managers led to short termism 2. Senior dev management makes misinformed decisions constantly and is unaware of the consequences, busy fighting fires started by themselves 3. PM organization is over politicized and lack vision 4. QA does manual testing for the most part and causes bottle neck in release cycle. Product quality declined as developer test coverage dropping 5, Engineers don't agree with each other and everyone wants to build their own stack. Poor performers drag down team morale 6. people who only talk the talk rise up the ladder. Smart people adapt to manage up, form clubs or bite their tongue 7. 90% of the work done by 10% of the people. Reward distribution is a different story 8. lost talented people who walk the walk. SPOFs. Competitive advantage diminishing

avatar
Guidewire Response
12y
As head of our product development team I would like to thank you for your feedback and offer my perspective. The Guidewire team prides itself on living up to our core values of integrity, rationality, and collegiality. These are the same principles upon which Guidewire was founded and they remain at the heart of all we do together today. Guidewire has an open door policy, and we encourage all employees to reach out any member of the management team, at any time and for any reason, without any fear of judgment or retribution. I would like to elaborate on some of the cultural principles we aspire to in our product development organization. We make the most rational decisions we can given the facts available to us, delegate decision making to the most informed and knowledgeable people, communicate decisions openly, introspect upon those decisions, and adjust as necessary as we learn. When tackling challenges, our engineers, product managers, and others come with differing points of view informed by their unique experiences and insights. It is through vigorous debate, discussion, and understanding of facts that the best answer to a given challenge emerges. Sometimes we make mistakes and when we do, we do our utmost to learn from them. Our senior management team always wants to hear direct feedback – positive or negative. Hearing and acting on that feedback is crucial to serving our customers with excellence and creating a great place to work. So whenever someone raises a concern, it is a top priority of senior management to listen and respond to suggestions for improvement.
Viewing 1255 - 1257 of 1,472 Reviews

Glassdoor has 1,623 Guidewire reviews submitted anonymously by Guidewire employees. Read employee reviews and ratings on Glassdoor to decide if Guidewire is right for you.