BlackBerry Reviews in Toronto, ON, Canada Area

Current Employee – been working at BlackBerry full-time for more than 7 years

Pros – - Relatively good benefits
 - Top management is excellent

Cons – - Middle management needs to be refreshed
 - Compensation & rewards are lacking
 - Job transitions / promotions / lateral moves needs to be reworked

Advice to Senior Management – As the culture shift progresses you're going to have to find some top notch middle managers. I would suggest looking towards some of your top tier individual contributors and crowdsourcing them on what support they need to do their job. Then keep middle management accountable to the requirements of the individual contributors. It would also be a good idea to recognize and promote some of the individuals who are included in your top talent by creating a process to identify the top 10 percent and groom them for leadership. Managers must be accountable for this leadership grooming with the focus on supporting the front-line workers. A similar process should also be put in place to deal with the bottom 5-15% of employees. They will need to be cut as they are dragging the rest of the company down.

No, I would not recommend this company to a friend – I'm optimistic about the outlook for this company

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

Pros – When i started at RIM, managers/VPs had an open door policy and the success of the company relied on everyone that worked there. Everyone worked hard and the rewards were unbelievable. RIM was the company to beat. We were unstoppable. The longer i worked there, and the larger the company got they got more and more management heavy by the month. Those that were there the longest and had the most friends got promoted, not by skill and dedication. It was all about who you were friends with. At one point when i queried on why i wasn't being promoted when i was working 72hr weeks and giving the company every thing i got, i was told "It's not how hard you work, it's who you know. You need to network more." Who has time to network when you're trying to accomplish 6-8 large scale projects on time, under budget, and in scope When one of my projects was in jeapordy of becoming severely behind schedule because of the program manager being MIA for weeks, i tried to escalate to my director (who was one of their close friends and I was sternly told "keep your mouth shut, your head down and let it go. You don't want to p#$$ off the wrong people here...get me?" After that I gave up trying to shine and be promoted...as many did. I did my work to the best of my ability but no longer volunteered to take on additional tasks/projects. I knew i couldn't win. There was no point in trying to finish my project on time, budget and scope. Senior management didn't care if we didn't make our timeline. The kicker of my story...that program manager kept his job during the layoffs and i was let go?!

Cons – I started at BlackBerry when the company was still known as RIM and still growing. As the company continued to grow larger and ex AT&T senior management was hired the company began to mistreat it's employees in a BIG way. The staff called it RIMT&T. Many were afraid (and still are) to speak up to the inefficiencies to try and make things better and run more smoothly. Those that tried to speak up and make things better were walked out during the layoffs. Those that are/were yes men were kept. The ones that stayed were the ones "praying" to be packaged and NEVER work a full day or week. One bragging how she "worked" pool side for the entire summer, not even coming in to office once in two months, while the rest of us were walked out. One of the BEST companies I ever had the privledge of working for had taken a major nose dive in morale. The worst part is, to this day I still celebrate the companies successes and secretly cheer them on even after severely been thrown to the curb like mere garbage. I've even tried to reapply for the same job I previously held and can't even get an interview. I get emails saying that candidates with more experience and skills have been selected for an interview.

Advice to Senior Management – Continue getting rid of the top management AT&Ters. RIM/BlackBerry is too senior management heavy and staff are literally terrified to speak up about ways to make processes better or inefficiencies. Bring back the manager/employee open door policy with no fear of honesty. Bring RIM/BlackBerry back to its former glory that many of us (that were thrown to the curb like utter garbage) were so very proud to be a part of. Thorsten promised that the companies brought in to audit the departments would find the inefficiencies. What a crock. Tons of good, extremely hard working people lost their jobs, homes, vehicles, etc. while those that were praying for packages and laughing that they were only in the office for a couple hours a day and that they had already mentally "checked out" months ago are STILL at the newly named BlackBerry. I can't even get an interview for a job that i held and did fantastic according to every single performance review for 9 years. I get emails back telling me that they've chosen a candidate with more experience and a better skillset. Umm sure. Yet still....i love that company and continue to try and go back to try and help the company succeed. I guess that just makes ME the foolish one. :(

No, I would not recommend this company to a friend – I'm optimistic about the outlook for this company

Former Employee – worked at BlackBerry full-time for more than 7 years

Pros – Higher than average salary. Good resources for your job. Coworkers are good people to work with. Waterloo is a nice area.

Cons – Top heavy management. Too many layers needed to get anything done. No accountability in some groups. More senior management ego driven than customer driven. We were told openly that our opinion mattered but treated poorly when we did express our opinions on new ideas and way to improve products and process - senior management did not want to listen.

Advice to Senior Management – Thorsten has been doing a good job so far to clean things up - he needs to keep that on track. There is still some house cleaning to be done to get innovation to move faster and more efficiently. Once completed should be a much better company to work for.

No, I would not recommend this company to a friend

Current Employee – been working at BlackBerry full-time for more than 7 years

Pros – People know and recognize the product (for better or worse). A decent job if you can put aside some of your own personal ambition/standards. Some very talented people may still work there for now.

Cons – A deeply routed political environment. Shrinking company means that those with an acumen for playing the game are in top gear and so career advancement becomes less based on merit and more about manipulation. It could be a good place if you are that kind of person. A lot of dead weight people who should find it very difficult to be employed anywhere else unless it's another bloated corporation with irresponsible hiring practices. They definitely overshadow those who are competent and sometimes it will amaze you that they have made a product. Do not expect to be fulfilled or to reach your potential - you will be inhibited by terrible management and naïve leadership every step of the way. It's not a bad gig if all you want is a paycheck to do as little work as possible - but don't expect to build a career here. You certainly won't acquire skills that transfer very well anywhere else, because most other places want people who do the best work they can and don't tolerate or settle for incompetence and banality. I really can't emphasize this enough. If you join this company expecting to do great work with great tools and great people you will be disappointed.

Advice to Senior Management – Stop congratulating yourselves at every opportunity and realize you have serious and severe deficiencies both within your own ranks (senior management) as well as through the middle layer. Understand that you have acquired baggage that cannot be dropped simply by asking the very people who are themselves baggage to evaluate who should be let go. I hate to say it, but you should honestly consider hiring an external entity to re-interview your employees to determine if they are worth retaining, so that you can avoid the insane political web that has formed in response to the sheer terror you've stricken your employees with over these last years.

No, I would not recommend this company to a friend – I'm not optimistic about the outlook for this company

Former Employee – worked at BlackBerry as a contractor for more than a year

Pros – There is still some great talent left in this company. Some of the people that I worked with at RIM are the most talented and driven that I have ever met.

Cons – Management does not understand processes and has a very hack and slash approach to savings. They waste money by cutting a job function only to reinstate it or staff it with contingent workers. It was a very bandaide driven approach.

Advice to Senior Management – Do some long term planning and make sure that a cut will actually save money prior to making the cut and back peddling later

No, I would not recommend this company to a friend – I'm optimistic about the outlook for this company

Current Employee – been working at BlackBerry full-time for more than 7 years

Pros – A truly innovative product set that really met a need 5 years ago
Lots of opportunity to grow internally
Brand name recognition

Cons – Company didn't pivot with the times to stay relevant
Nobody below a VP is allowed to really make and own a decision
Everyone believes they have the decision power...which means nobody really does

Advice to Senior Management – All the teams to make and own decisions...VP's, SVP's and EVP's shouldn't be required for decisions on the simplest of tasks

No, I would not recommend this company to a friend – I'm not optimistic about the outlook for this company

Former Employee – worked at BlackBerry as a contractor for more than 3 years

Pros – -Average Benefits
-Higher than average compensation
-Decent co-workers/peers

Cons – Management are unable to recognize when they have talented and motivated employees within their organization. No chance for personal projects; innovation is not fostered in the testing environment. They are looking for manual testing drones. On that note, there was little to no respect for employees' personal lives.
Due to the padded amount of upper management, it takes a very long time to get any type of promotion within the department - and transferring between teams was treated with stigma and negativity.

Advice to Senior Management – Upper management needs to actually 'listen' to their employees, not just 'let them talk'. You are bleeding skilled and motivated employees to lower salary positions at far better companies.

No, I would not recommend this company to a friend

Former Employee – worked at BlackBerry full-time for more than a year

Pros – Overall: Salaries are good, the company pays well. Benefits are competitive. Casual work environment. Some cool people work there. You get a BlackBerry for the duration of your employment and some teams get PlayBooks.

My job: My job allowed me some freedom and creativity in how I completed projects, and I worked with some great people on some interesting projects. I had a lot of freedom in determining my schedule and in structuring my projects, which was quite nice. Some parts of my job were very interesting, challenging and exciting.

Cons – RIM hires a lot of people without any technology or corporate experience and it shows, particularly with people who joined the company before the growth years (from 2003-2007) and then got promoted into management jobs they were not qualified to do. This created a LOT of problems in that the company is incredibly disorganized and there a definite lack of a pro-active approach to issues.

Also some managers have close friendships with some of their direct reports which creates problems.

In my area there was complete lack of any structure or process which did not help in dealing with the issues our team and the company was facing. This was not helped by the complete indifference of the senior executives, who didn't communicate about what was going on or lied about it when they did.

There was really no career or job progression to speak of in my job, although RIM is very disorganized so some teams might have well-defined career paths. RIM is not like any other corporation in that it's run like a small business so you never know what the team you're joining is like -- it could be well run or it could be a complete mess.

Advice to Senior Management – Learn to manage. Read a book, go to school, something, anything would help.

No, I would not recommend this company to a friend – I'm not optimistic about the outlook for this company

Former Employee – worked at BlackBerry as an intern for more than a year

Pros – good compensation.
good teammates.
good CEO.
good place to start your career.

Cons – from managerial to Senior VP levels, they all just care about money, not the company, not the products, not even the customers.

a Senior VP said RIM doesnt need any advertisement, just like Boeing 747 doesnt need any

Advice to Senior Management – changing the exec team only is not enough when all the people between them and the engineers are not doing their job properly

No, I would not recommend this company to a friend

Former Employee – worked at BlackBerry full-time for more than 7 years

Pros – - as a young employee in a fast moving and growing company I got the opportunity and exposure to do thing I probably wouldn't have been entrusted in a more established firm
- fast moving, lots of change so your work day is never boring
- recent high-level management change seems to be making the right decisions and addressing huge gaps in the previous leadership
- great ideas and lots of innovation

Cons – - fast moving and lots of change so you can never plan or focus on the same thing
- poor execution and implementation of ideas and prototypes, solutions were often half-baked or missing key features when launched in an effort to rush to market
- too many conflicting priorities, trying to accomplish too much with too little
- leadership previously lacked a strategic vision for the company
- leadership was often promoted because of strong technical skills but not good people leaders
- refused to make the difficult decisions and as a result quality consistently suffered

Advice to Senior Management – Continue to evaluate people in key leadership roles. Focus on key strengths and do them well and don't rush a product to market when the solution isn't completed

No, I would not recommend this company to a friend – I'm not optimistic about the outlook for this company