A once-scrappy company has become a slow, lumbering beast
Pros
-Good people, depending on which acquisition and how much attrition they've suffered. -Incoming salaries are near market rates. My acquisition got a slight bump when we joined to make up for a decreased 401k match. -Health benefits are decent, if you're ok with an HSA plan. (The PPO plan offered is kind of a joke at this point.) -Good work/life balance. Vacation is ok, and most teams don't expect you to work constantly, at least in engineering.
Cons
-Oppressive bureaucracy. Tools, systems, and teams are heavily centralized to achieve perceived economies of scale, and hundreds of SOPs are in place for standardization. In practice, these just place major burdens on everyday activities, and most acquisitions never get fully standardized anyway. -Tools are outdated. There's not a lot of budget to update and maintain systems, and the worst part is that there is a small team of cheerleaders around every old and busted tool, who prevent even the most sincere attempts to drag them into modern times. -Incoherent strategy. We seem to have a new direction with every new acquisition, and until now it's at least orbited around some form of EIM. But with Carbonite, now we're doing retail. Go figure. -Top execs obsessed with perceived competitors more than building good products. As product teams, we do focus on product-centered goals. But as a company, it's all about beating IBM and Box. -The best talent leaves. In addition to the cuts that sometimes happen after acquisitions, the OpenText culture doesn't support retaining the best talent, and they soon leave for greener pastures. Eventually, teams seem to be made up of cynics and folks who are stuck in place for whatever reason. -Attrition is either absorbed or off-shored. When folks do leave, they either won't be backfilled, or they'll be backfilled with multiple reqs in a lower-cost geography, in an attempt to throw warm bodies at engineering problems. -Don't expect raises to keep pace with the market or even meet cost-of-living increases. Though salaries start out at near-market levels, they will almost assuredly lag behind within a couple of years. -Unconcerned with employee engagement. Token surveys are done that don't offer any open-ended questions and don't gather any real data on what employees are thinking. Complaints about anything, however valid, invariably stop at most two-levels up the management chain when a manager at that level "has their reasons" and shuts down the conversation. -Innovation by acquisition. No time or resources for organic innovation, because there's always another acquisition in the pipeline.
