NetApp reviews about "upper management"

* Bad management by the upper management

Upper management is inconsistent and unapproachable

Poor upper management. Constant re-orgs. No meritocracy

Ultimately, I have become totally disillusioned with NetApp in my time here, and there is an ongoing mass exodus of employees that feel the same way. Here are my observations: - The biggest problem at NetApp is the business unit structure. While this model may work really well in other organizations, I consider this a colossal mistake in NetApp's case. The BUs act like little fiefdoms, who not only don't work together at all but actively criticize the others on a constant basis. - NetApp has become increasingly political in my time here. There's an extreme attitude of "don't play in my sandbox", often at the cost of collaboration. The blame game is huge in every team I've worked for or with. This political atmosphere also creates a death-by-committee when it comes to decision-making. To get approval for even mundane things, you often have to get approval/input from 5-10 people, because they all want to be the decision-maker on everything. - There is very little opportunity for growth here. Basically, moving your career path means moving into a lateral position, until there is another layoff. Layoffs happen often, and upper management never acknowledges them or explains them, so instead, one day you'll just notice a whole bunch of colleagues are gone. - NetApp is stuck in its way of thinking, and from my perspective, out of touch with the market. It immediately dismisses competitors like Pure and Nutanix instead of learning from their successes. There's a reason potential customers love their simplicity...being outrageously complicated isn't a good thing for a tech company. And this "stuck" way of thinking might also be due to the makeup of employees. At least at headquarters, the average age of an employee has to be 50. There are maybe 20 people under 30 on the entire campus, and every year the intern program seems to get smaller. If you don't hire a better percentage of young talent, you're never going to evolve with the market and keep your perspective fresh.

No trust in decisions upper management takes layoffs

Frequent layoffs is real thing here. They are usually small and not notified by the upper management. More BS from the upper management during all hands. Needless to say not only it has impacted the morale of the employees and eventually it resulted in huge distrust towards upper management. Many highly experienced, very resourceful and loyal people were impacted by transformations (a netapp euphemism for layoffs, it's an ongoing thing according to them) over the last few years. Lack of any training available for young inexperienced engineers. NetApp doesn't invest on developing young talent. Pennywise and pound foolish attitude sometimes. Many experienced folks are retired/retiring and lot of their tribal knowledge is lost. Young engineers have to go through constant uphill battle to learn new technology and current trends in their roles themselves in order to stay relevant in the industry. Heavily relies on outsourcing business model. Real work has become less and less over the years and it's a major threat to job security overall. Like other major storage players, much of the engineering has been outsourced to Asia/India to save money. As an engineer you'll be end up doing very little technical work sometimes. More focus on meeting the tight schedule and very little on the quality of product. Upper management favor a particular business unit, while others hardly get any recognition. Less exposure to new technologies, lack of innovation, less challenging environment which can hinder your career progress. Lots of process documents and meetings to improve processes even though people hardly follow any processes.