Advent Software Reviews

Current Employee – been working at Advent Software full-time for more than 3 years

Pros – We come, we work, and we go home to eat dinner with our families. Dinner should never be eaten at work! Work/Life Balance is greatly appreciated and respected here. We effort to be great, we say it enough; we drink the Kool-Aid, nothing wrong with that. We want to move from good to great. We might never be great, but are trying. Everyone is trying.

Cons – Fresh characters and new personalities are good. Fresh skills and current work experiences are good. We need to have a little more turn-over of the old guard. Sales team needs a shaken up, Professional Services needs to be shaken up, Product Development/Engineer was just re-org’ed, so we will see about Advent in the Cloud.

Advice to Senior Management – Managements relationship with Sales concerns me.

Yes, I would recommend this company to a friend – I'm optimistic about the outlook for this company

Current Employee – been working at Advent Software full-time for more than 8 years

Pros – Its a great company to work for. They hire a diverse group of innovative, smart and friendly people who are fully vested in making the company successful. They take care of their employees. They promote a good work life balance. The work environment is a lot of fun even though we work really hard.

Cons – A little behind on electronic invoicing and on line access to invoices and payments for clients.

Yes, I would recommend this company to a friend – I'm optimistic about the outlook for this company

Former Employee – worked at Advent Software full-time for less than a year

Pros – Advent has one of the best cultures in terms of training and team-building that I have ever encountered. I appreciated every day that I was employed by Advent and am sorry I took a gamble with a former co-worker to leave. Advent has things going in line with a fantastic workplace and people.

Cons – Lack of upward mobility and advancement opportunities due to longevity of co-worker employment.

Advice to Senior Management – Open up avenues for advancement.

Yes, I would recommend this company to a friend – I'm optimistic about the outlook for this company

Current Employee – been working at Advent Software full-time for more than a year

Pros – benefits, relaxed environment, people, good for those who have a family and are looking for a long term position, nice NY office, they encourage health and awareness, volunteerism, community assistance.

Cons – clients are pretentious, demanding, and unfriendly. Lack of raises or promotions, upper management is good, but middle management is horrible.

Advice to Senior Management – improve your middle managers, stop grandfathering employees into management roles simply because of their tenure, and not their capabilities.

Yes, I would recommend this company to a friend – I'm optimistic about the outlook for this company

Current Employee – been working at Advent Software full-time for more than 3 years

Pros – Flexibility, motivated employees, dog friendly office.

Cons – If you do not have a clear path for your career growth you can get pushed into a position/path you may not want to be in.

Former Employee – worked at Advent Software full-time for more than 3 years

Pros – Great training programs, multicultural work environment, incentives and rewards for doing a good job

Cons – not that easy to move to different departments or move up in the company to get leadership positions

Yes, I would recommend this company to a friend – I'm optimistic about the outlook for this company

Current Employee – been working at Advent Software

Pros – Advent truly cares about its employees. The 2008 recession is a great example of this. Other companies had layoffs and salary cuts, Advent made minimal benefit cuts (fewer types of free milk in the kitchens, but the important stuff like salary, vacation, 401k matching, etc was intact). Merit increases were suspended for a year (and subsequently paid).

Poor managers are not tolerated. When a poor manager is detected, senior managers actively coach the poor manager. If coaching fails, the manager is let go.

The company continuously strives for improvement.

Cons – Their is a fairly clueless middle management layer that is entrusted with too much decision making power. Duplication of product lines is hampering growth and flexibility in the product suite.

Advice to Senior Management – The company needs stronger direction. We are currently on track to be the old company that gets unseated by an upstart or a competitor with a smarter solution. We can't buyout our competitors forever.

Yes, I would recommend this company to a friend

Current Employee – been working at Advent Software

Pros – Advent operates in a narrow, deep, requirements-intensive technology and industry niche, which influences much about how the company is managed and how it can grow. Given these attributes of the business Advent happens to be in, it is an exceptionally well-managed company and a great place to work and to develop deep competence.

Two critical things Advent must constantly strive for:
1) it must be a reliable vendor for its customers. Among other things, this means Advent must take longer to release technology, because the design and testing phases are so extended; and it means Advent actually cannot take many risks, because it will disrupt customers if something doesn't work. Unlike many companies in the San Francisco area, Advent cannot easily "try" things to see what might work; everything has to work as soon as it's announced to customers.
2) it must be staffed with people who combine functional competence (ie, ability to write software, ability to sell, ability to market) with extremely deep, focused domain knowledge about investment management systems (ie, the difference between hedge fund traders and institutional traders, the difference between the transaction records of various fixed income securities, etc). The depth of this domain, and the kind of people attracted to it, can be almost crazy at times, but successful people at Advent and in this line of work must care about the details of the domain.

On balance, Advent meets these objectives. In my experience, senior management cares deeply about whether the technology works for customers, and spends surprisingly significant amount of time thinking about employees and their well-being. They don't always get it perfect, but the effort, intent, and overall track record is very positive.

My view is that employees (and customers, for that matter) who get frustrated with Advent are not aware of or are not assigning value to the constraints that Advent must live with. The people who fail or get frustrated are generally the ones who don't understand the constraints, take shortcuts, or try to glide above the details. Contrary to some of the unfavorable comments here, in my experience senior management cared very deeply about the input and well-being of employees who know what they are doing, and talented people had plenty of opportunity to grow within Advent. Another correction to some of the comments here: there are senior people, at the very top ranks and throughout the middle management, who have deep experience elsewhere. Yes, there are many Advent lifers throughout all levels of the company, but it's not exclusive that way, and the lifers who have risen have all contributed significantly and earned their promotions.

Also, I'd reiterate what many others mentioned on the good benefits and general work environment. Many commented on things like the dog policy. I'd also point out Advent's substantial focus on community service; for example, the company basically shuts down for a day every year so everyone can go out and do public service (this is in addition to many smaller service opportunities throughout the year) . . . Advent is not a very big company but has a broad and deep service attitude that is bigger than the size of the company would justify.

Cons – Given the constraints above, Advent's business changes and grows only incrementally, and every new step and commitment must be undertaken with a lot of care and planning. Therefore, Advent is not a "let's draw it up on the whiteboard and go for it" kind of company. If you are looking for a change-by-the-day Silicon Valley experience, you might be disappointed.

Advice to Senior Management – Stick to the principles that enabled Advent to survive market crises and grow when many of its competitors sold out or shut down. If anything, there's always an opportunity to communicate more to employees so they understand what and why decisions are being made, or not made.

Yes, I would recommend this company to a friend

Current Employee – been working at Advent Software

Pros – Leadership is top notch
good work-life balance
ethical

Cons – finger-pointing
need to get rid of mean people

Advice to Senior Management – Listen to the groups who do NOT like their manager; they will leave and you'll be stuck with a terrible manager.

Yes, I would recommend this company to a friend

Current Employee – been working at Advent Software

Pros – Stable company, smart people, they know their employees are one of their biggest assets and they work hard to keep employees for a long time.

Cons – There can be some red tape, as is usual for larger companies, but it's not terrible. The company now has offices in several major cities across the US and internationally, but the majority of employees reside in San Fransisco. If you're not one of those employees in SF, sometimes it can feel like you're not really a part of the Advent family.

Advice to Senior Management – Make your employees who aren't in San Fransisco feel like they're just as important as the ones in SF.

Yes, I would recommend this company to a friend