Red Hat reviews

I thought the pay was solid after racking up 8+ years of core+ RSU awards at the PSE level. I honestly didn't think I could earn more, and Cisco offered 100k more total comp (although the job has slightly more responsibility). So I guess the pay is bad, even for highly experienced people, although I can hardly complain - my total comp has 5*'ed in the last 10 years. Red Hat at the PSE and above level is highly political even in engineering, which is fine - its like that everywhere, but if your expecting some daisy dream of no political behavior because Red Hat has open source roots, forget about it. Red Hat values internal influence more then external influence mainly because many if its staff have wide influence over a variety of communities through their actions. Internal influence is highly regarded as a result and highly guarded as well. As Red Hat becomes larger, some managers are out of their depth. In 99% of cases, a manager will do the right thing for the right reason. Then there is the 1% action that results in a terrible outcome that is a mistake even a rookie manager wouldn't dare make. Red Hat believes in the 1:25 philosophy so if you need much hand holding this isn't the place for you. To keep on top of the system, you have to perform, which may mean long hours especially if ramping up on new tech.

The company in general does a very poor job of learning from it's own past mistakes. Post-pandemic leadership has been poor, with layoffs then re-hiring for some of the exact same positions. Employee-to-manager ratio is getting worse by the day. Over-payed executives and promotion of narcissists. Engineering teams are under-resourced and over-worked. Company is incredibly stingy when it comes to day-to-day operations, but overly generous with director-level and higher pay and bonuses.