Guidewire reviews

The company has a history of poor software engineering. It got deals done - which is great - but without the discipline to avoid custom implementations and unnecessary rework. It is a decade late getting to the cloud, and it's taking a lot of effort to fix the poor implementations of the past. The internal politics here is pathetic. The company claims that it's internal culture is great, but it's one of the more negative groups I've experienced. There's a clique of Guidewire veterans in the product development division (engineering, product management, QA, docs, etc) who are the very people responsible for the many poor product and development decisions of the past. These individuals strut around with an obnoxious arrogance and cluelessness of what they've done, and they keep "outsiders" at bay. The new head of the division is competent, but equally arrogant. He gets accolades but has yet to deliver more than routine updates to the old products. The important infrastructure changes he initiated have yet to be released and it's my opinion that's due to poor management throughout the middle management tier.

While some teams are allowed to freely interact and grow working relationships, others are expected to keep their nose to the grindstone all day long and interact with others only when required. If you talk with others to much, your manager will absolutely call you out on it. If you aren't performing on par with others, reports are readily available to show your shortcomings, but reports are just numbers and no detail. You are micromanaged to the nth degree. I feel I cannot interact freely with my own team, and the team is isolated not only from the rest of the employees, but from each other as well. Therefore collaboration among the teams rarely happens. I see other groups bringing in coffee for their team members, or some other treat, but a few groups would never be allowed to go on an afternoon coffee run. The time you arrive and leave is watched closely. There are also card readers on both sides of the doors leading to the bathrooms, so it feels as if your bathroom breaks may even be monitored as well. Existing technology is horribly under-utilized and all processes have vast amount of potential to be improved and streamlined. However, the teams are stretched too thin to work on process refinement. Talent within teams is also vastly underutilized due to current environment.