Pros
Pros include: - Paychecks generally came on time - Didn't harvest my organs - I finally got to meet an OT executive in person- after I put in my 2 weeks' notice
Cons
Grab some coffee/tea, because this is going to take a while. I worked at the same business unit for 14 years, as it went through half a dozen acquisitions. Ultimately, we were acquired by OT, where I was a director. The cons need to be categorized, so let's split this into compensation/career/culture. -- Compensation -- - 1% 401k match. So if you get acquired, good chance you're taking an effective pay cut - 1% annual raises. Not "1% plus COLA" or "1% plus merit." Just... 1%. And that's only if you're in the lucky half of the company that gets a raise at all. - RSU's don't happen unless you're management. I was management, and I didn't even really get RSU's until they put their retention motion into full swing. - Benefits are terrible. I didn't use the health insurance much, but it's pricey for what it is - Quality-of-life stuff - like, say, company T-shirts or even the company buying you coffee once in a while - is non-existent. -- Career -- OpenText buys companies, and then slowly strangles them. It does not view promoting talent (in either the sense of "letting talent operate freely" or "rewarding thereof") as a key priority, whatsoever. We lost significant amounts of subject matter expertise that I valued highly over both cultural and compensation issues. During my tenure at OT (I was only there two years, on account of being acquired), I had 5 different VP's / directors I reported to. Maybe six. Churn happens in management and directorial ranks. For cultural reasons I'll discuss below, management is also a soul-crushing experience (as in, the crushing of the manager's soul, though individual contributors' souls also get crushed). Career is heavily focused on surviving attrition and strict adherence to antiquated procedures. I used to work for both state and federal government, and OT managed to - somehow - find a way to make one's career journey somehow worse than either of those. In short - if you need a job, take one here. Then immediately begin looking elsewhere. It does not develop its own technology, and it does not reward those who are integral to developing the tech they acquire. -- Culture -- Ah... where to even start here? Everything is micromanaged. When the Log4J issue arose, Mark B ++ (the CEO) required everybody responsible for any customer-facing piece of technology (and keep in mind, OT has over 200 pieces of software) to get approval from him prior to publishing any customer-facing KB article. Meanwhile, Sales and Support - who have to deal with customers demanding some kind message to relay to customers - are stuck trying to delay customers. Customers are rightly upset; for backup/content management, knowing your data hasn't been breached is key. Did MarkB add any value to the individual software communications? No. But he still wanted to see all 200+ of them. Directors and managers have to essentially act as meat shields between Mark and his bad ideas and the individual contributors that have to deal with their fallout. Even as a director with considerable subject matter expertise (and thus didn't need to hassle people on my team to provide answers to Mark's fire drills), this grated on me extensively. A colleague of mine wanted to take his team out for beers in the EU. Keep in mind, this is a business unit that generates 8 figures a year for the company. It's not going to shift anyone's zip code, but the entire operations department could comfortably fit in an small sedan. The 200EU bill required CEO approval. Mark B++ is both the CTO and the CEO. Presumably, as CTO, he's responsible for integrating new companies into OT. Right now, the effort to do that for OT's largest acquisition to date - slated for six months - is now at month 30. Rafts full of valued employees with subject matter expertise have been driven out because they insisted on detailed requirements being captured by OT, who were attempting to lift-and-replace a 20-year-old system in under a year. OT's response was to hire contractors. Anyone who's dealt with legacy systems knows what value legacy people can bring to the table... except OT, apparently. As CEO, he launches into ideological missives. When the SC leak occurred, he fired up his laptop and indicated that anyone who wanted a could-be-banned medical procedure would receive a 4k stipend to do so. He did this on a Saturday night. Did he have time to talk to HR or legal? No. Is he rolling out this policy in, say, the Middle East, where OT has a wide practice and where such a thing would require genuine courage? Also no. Has the law actually been changed? No. In short, he demonstrated how unprincipled OT was - it doesn't really care all that much about its employees, and it doesn't really care all that much about the freedoms MarkB discusses if we're going to apply them in a hazard and culturally relativistic matter. Does the world need MarkB, Social Justice extraordinaire? Not really. OpenText direly needs some quality leadership, though. Attrition is atrocious. Anyone breezing through these reviews is sure to note some statistical oddities - that on Glassdoor presently, MarkB has an 82% approval rating. Higher than the percentage of people that recommend working here. Pretty high given that the last employee pulse survey indicated over half of employees were dissatisfied with executive leadership. When asked about negative reviews on this site, Mark B stated, and I quote, "I can pay to raise our ratings there." I will leave the reader to connect those dots as he or she sees fit.
