Riverbed presents a good vision, executes successfully, and values its employees
Pros
* Executive management has a clear vision and executes it with smart finance, acquisitions, and communication * Product management is fairly good at providing reliable data * Acquisitions are given a lot of freedom to run their business the way they want. This gives the feel of a smaller more agile company. * Employees are valued: benefits are better than expected, and when they change, they generally get better. Coffee, soda, juice, milk, cereal, and snacks are free and always available. Specialized equipment requests are usually honored. * Healthy promotion from within
Cons
* IT wants to lock down developers to the point that it interferes with productivity. VPN is required on the local wifi. Hardware vendor has limited choices that aren't developer friendly. All communication must go through the system which is routed to an outside vendor to triage. * Development groups do not support each other very well. Certain groups (larger ones) do not have any motivation to respond to requests from other groups.
