SolarWinds reviews

3.7

70% would recommend to a friend

(1,458 total reviews)
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Sudhakar Ramakrishna

78% approve of CEO

64% positive business outlook

SolarWinds has an employee rating of 3.7 out of 5 stars, based on 1,458 company reviews on Glassdoor which indicates that most employees have a good working experience there. The SolarWinds employee rating is in line with the average (within 1 standard deviation) for employers within the Information Technology industry (3.9 stars).

Reviews by job title

1K reviews
1.0
Aug 1, 2014
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

Catered lunches, onsite gym, onsite cafeteria and coffee shop, beautiful new facilities.

Cons

Biggest problem: little to no promotion from within. Frequent turnover because of nowhere to go, cultural fit and lowball starting salaries. Several people I knew in the company moved backwards in their careers (lessened responsibility, lessened influence, and assigned to less complex and engaging work) through reorganizations of the department. Reorganization is frequent. It's one thing to be willing to change, but it feels as if the company is disorganized and has no sense of direction. Taking the initiative to get things done is almost discouraged due to the highly compartmentalized nature of the marketing department, yet the frequent shuffling or roles often makes it difficult to find the appropriate person who owns a task. Marketing in particular is extremely cliquish, as another review stated. There is an exclusionary attitude towards members of the company who don't fit a certain image. What is said to a person's face and what is said when they are not around are often two very different things. Marketing relies too heavily on email (which its audience sees as spam) and is resistant to change their approach to fit the needs of sales or engineering. SolarWinds' technical staff is highly intelligent and a joy to work with, yet they often dread working with marketing. You are expected to be online or reachable at almost all hours of the day, and vacation/family/emergency time is not respected. If you wait to check email when you get to work after time off, regardless of why, you are behind. There is no semblance of work/life balance, especially outside of the VP level. Lowest-level employees are slammed with work with too few thanks or opportunities to grow beyond their usual responsibilities. There are many managers and not enough ways to be promoted into or above that role. Those who leave because they want more time for their personal life get framed in a negative light: "they couldn't keep up with the pace." That pace is unsustainable for a person with a family or other responsibilities outside of work, especially given the low pay and rare opportunities for career growth. A geek would feel unwelcome here. That is a huge problem when you work in tech.

1.0
Jul 21, 2014
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

There are a lot of great people who work there. They offer freebies such as a catered lunches, snacks, sodas, and quarterly birthday celebrations, meaning free cupcakes. There is access to a gym onsite.

Cons

Where to begin? If you are looking for career growth and development, this is not the place for you. There are a lucky few who have been promoted, but it is few and far-between. Some managers have to go around their supervisors and work solely with HR to get their people promoted. Others are happy to lay off their team members without a second thought. Trying to get training to improve yourself for the betterment of the company is an uphill battle. I worked in Marketing where quantity over quality is key and campaigns need only be "good enough". The customers are inundated with emails, mixed branding messages, and there seems to be no end in sight. There is no work/life balance. The CEO said repeatedly once employees walk though the door their only thought should be how to grow SolarWinds. On an incredibly bad weather day, when schools were shut down, the CEO emailed the company to say the Austin office would still be open. If employees could not make it into the office, they needed to talk to their managers to make sure they had 8 hours of work to do at home. If they didn't have 8 hours, the CEO said they needed to take vacation time

2.0
Jul 18, 2014
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

There is room for growth and there are lots of leadership opportunities. This being said, the types of leadership opportunities offered are not for everyone. They provide lunches and snacks but this is done only to keep people in the office for more hours.

Cons

Having been in management, I can say that this is a company of extreme micromanagement and if you are on the sales side you will not be allowed to provide your reps with any autonomy. From the time they get into the office in the morning, to the number of dials made, you will be watching their every move. Management emails reps accounts and pushes incredibly hard to get deals in on a daily, weekly and monthly basis. Customer relationships are less important than turning in deals and I was told multiple times, 'a dollar day is worth more than 2 tomorrow'. This is difficult if you are a sales person who sells based on relationships and quality of product. There is also very little to be said for work/life balance. If you are a seasoned salesperson who is used to being able to sneak out of the office for doctor's appointments etc. and work from home when needed, that sort of culture does not exist at Solarwinds. Sales can be a rewarding and flexible career and that is not true of this company. Every female rep I spoke to said that she would have to quit once children came along because there is really no flexibility. If you want to work from home for half a day and go to a doctor's appointment, you need to take the day off. Vacation time is limited as well and if you are someone who likes to spend Christmas/New Year's with your family, you will have a hard time doing that here. The end of month, end of quarter, end of year push means extremely long hours even if you are over your number.

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Glassdoor has 1,551 SolarWinds reviews submitted anonymously by SolarWinds employees. Read employee reviews and ratings on Glassdoor to decide if SolarWinds is right for you.