Politically driven company with little runway on technology
Pros
Riverbed was once a wonderful place to work for and that has eroded over time. It has always been very politically driven versus a meritocracy. The products have always worked extremely well and I was very proud to sell them through my tenure. The employees always believed that Jerry (CEO) was doing what was in their best interest until the last year or so when key figures started to leave. The office is in a beautiful location and is stocked with good snacks. Riverbed's benefits are amazing as well.
Cons
The company is falling fast. Looking at earnings reports (take out selling of product lines and see how far off they are) and make your judgement. Infrastructure is moving to the cloud and WAN based products clearly have a short term shelf life. That is one of the main reasons that key people are leaving. Riverbed acquired the Opnet product line and it was by most opinions a huge mistake. Performance management and analytics of applications are incredibly important but they need to drive those results from SAAS/Cloud based applications. Overall the corporate culture is not what it was just a few years ago. Key positions in sales and HR have been filled with a lot of ex-cisco people who don't show much value in the employee. That is my opinion at least and I know it is shared by others. They have blatantly made horrible mistakes in their layoffs. Regional Sales reps at 5-20% of quota were kept on and other departments dismantled. Much of this was politically driven and a calculation of HR costs. This is not how it was presented by Jerry in October. There are hundreds of positions that are filled by people showing up at 10am leaving a 2 after a 1+ hour lunch and are making 100-200k per year (recruiting). They are so desperate to keep talent until the acquisition is completed that they are promoting reps who were on performance plan, managers who couldn't forecast and employees who are flat out lazy. Honestly if you really need a job this could be a good resume booster but don't think of this as more than a road bump.
