Citrix Systems Reviews

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

Pros – Work Flexibility
Free and Inexpensive Food
Nice working environment

Cons – Highly political environment, run without rudimentary controls over what a senior manager can do if they want to get rid of someone. They won't fire them outwardly, but constructive dismissal is practiced routinely in certain parts of the company.

Advice to Senior Management – Pay a little more attention to what the kids in HR are doing to people.

No, I would not recommend this company to a friend

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

Pros – The work environment is "fun". Lots of free food, lots of junkets, lots of little perks meant to boost morale. It's good place for middle-aged tech folk in the hump of their careers with mortgages and young kids, not hugely demanding intellectually and pretty flexible as far as offsite and flextime work goes. This is a place to start off a career for a year or two, or to take a 2-3 year break from the normal demands of higher-functioning tech companies in the Valley. Not a place to hang your hat for more than a few years, or you will lose your skill-edge and you will become demoralized. Or you can just be a mediocre stale "lifer" and enjoy the free food and drinks and call it a career. The Santa Barbara location is the best place -- it's the core of the intellectual chops of the company, and the overall vibe in SB is really quite nice. Santa Clara, or Florida -- not recommended.

Cons – Very poor leadership. Almost fickle to the point of childish. Upper management is treated as if they could change course at any minute, and at great cost to potential salary upgrades, bonuses, and desperately needed new hires, quick and rash "gut, from-the-hip" decisions by the CEO and his ilk has affected Citrix quite negatively. Frequent re-orgs are a given. This happens at every well-capitalized huge company to a certain degree -- at Citrix it's the rule, not the exception. There is absolutely no incentive to innovate or change processess. Innovation happens solely through acquisition, and that process is also poorly managed. Integration of newly acquired products into existing lines is an engineering nightmare -- nobody vets the acquisitions at a technical level and engineering is just expected to make it all work. A lot of B-School narcissists in the VP rank who drink the Kool-Aid of "technical fungibility" without having the slightest clue as to how their products are actually built, or work. A lot of "magical thinking". I marvel at the stock value of a company that really is just a conglomo-cluster of disparate acquisitions. The products themselves -- with the exception of the GoTo boondoggles -- are bug-riddled with very little effort invested in usability.

Advice to Senior Management – Scale back acquisitions and do a thorough clean-up and audit of existing management and initiatives. Put forth a management vision that has executional legs, not just a bunch of slick-sounding slogans and buzzwords that dodge accountability. In English: have the balls to put yourselves and your people to account. There's way too much deadwood up and down the chain.

No, I would not recommend this company to a friend

Former Employee – worked at Citrix Systems full-time

Pros – Benefits, perks, free food, friendly people

Cons – Worst place/team to work in citrix

Advice to Senior Management – Treat all employees equally and try to create a positive environment

No, I would not recommend this company to a friend

Current Employee – been working at Citrix Systems

Pros – - Go to Meeting access
- Flexible work hours
- Silicon Valley location is okay

Cons – - Terrible company work etiquette. Managers call way too many meetings and then don't show up or are always late. No agendas or goal oriented time lines. When not in fire drill mode managers cannot be located. Reactionary and shoddy work ethic. Expectations are very low for deliverables.

- Product updates are pushed live with glaring usability issues. Being first is more important than product reliability and usability.

- CEO is invisible to employees. Idolizes Apple. Gives direct orders to "make it more like Apple".

- High level of cronyism in mid and upper level management. Tyrants are allowed to make unqualified changes to product in the development stage over-riding months of preparation work.

- Ugly cubicle farm office environment with few perks. Lack luster cafeteria in building that no one goes to.

Advice to Senior Management – Clear out the deadwood. Too many employees are riding the gravy train without contributing anything. Need to update company perks and benefits in order to attract work class employees. Citrix is an innovation follower not a leader.

No, I would not recommend this company to a friend

Former Employee – worked at Citrix Systems

Pros – Most employees are smart and know their stuff.
Food is good.
Bene fits and pay are excellent.

Cons – The senior management at Citrix in the Marketing Dept is condescending, micro managing, unskilled, insecure and mean. Don't trust the nice people you meet in the interview. They may turn on you once you're in. In Marketing I witnessed the most immature and surprisingly unprofessional behavior this side of Kindergarten. Dysfunctional barely begins to describe this department. If you respect yourself, stay away. No matter how much they pay you. The situation is just plain sad, abusive, and unfortunately disguised.

Advice to Senior Management – You can't be the company you want to be when there is such incompetence in the team responsible for your outbound communications.

No, I would not recommend this company to a friend

Former Employee – worked at Citrix Systems

Pros – Good pay
Cool technology
Excellent flexible work environment

Cons – Micro managing executives
Disorganized leadership
Low morale

Advice to Senior Management – You're rotting from within. Beware. Certain execs who talk the talk to the public should be kept far away from those who actually do the work.

No, I would not recommend this company to a friend

Current Employee – been working at Citrix Systems

Pros – Team members are great to work with - smart and down to earth.

Cons – Very Poor Salary compared to peers.
Lack of recognition for projects not visible to senior management.
Inconsistent promotion policy.
Lack of training and career advancement.

Advice to Senior Management – Provide training opportunities for rank and file rather than just management training to managers.
Pay us at least the market salary - it doesn't help if the performance appraisal is really great but there is no corresponding salary increase.

No, I would not recommend this company to a friend

Former Employee – worked at Citrix Systems

Pros – A good history of products in the division I worked in, Citrix Online, which was an acquisition formerly known as ExpertCity. Citrix would not have GoToMyPC, GoToMeeting, or GoToAssist without this acquisition. ExpertCity was an innovative company with some extremely bright people. The products they created were strong and breathed new life in to Citrix as a whole. It was fun working at ExpertCity and Citrix up through the initial period after the acquisition.

Cons – After the acquisition of ExpertCity was complete, the talent began to disappear. The geniuses behind ExpertCity all quit, one by one, cashed out their options, and founded new startups. Making matters worse, there was an incredibly complex/redundant middle management structure with an emphasis on consensus, making any forward progress almost impossible due to constant conflicts.

The company has yet to release a new product since the acquisition in 2004, aside from incremental updates to maintain compatibility with operating system changes (Windows Vista, etc.), or spinoffs which are more marketing pushes than actual development. Fresh ideas were quite literally laughed at, or the thought of them instilled dread and panic in some middle management execs.

The sense I got about the rest of Citrix outside of this division in California is that it is very different culturally than the company they acquired. Their products seem incredibly arcane, dated, and so buggy that it's an absolute miracle of salesmanship that anyone takes Citrix seriously. MetaFrame is one of the most ugly, buggy pieces of software I've ever seen, for example.

Citrix's CEO Mark Templeton made a few trips out to California to see how we were doing. He's very personable and a great communicator, but lacks vision. Some of the ideas he expressed to us in meetings were so half-baked and silly that they would actually make excellent comedy. They also had nothing to do with the direction of the company at the time or subsequently - it was just mindless wheel spinning.

Somewhat amazingly, the company is still performing well, most likely because many businesses are entrenched into b2b subscription-based plans with Citrix that are pure gravy.

Advice to Senior Management – Acquire another innovative company, it's the only way you guys seem to be able to keep pace. It's time again.

No, I would not recommend this company to a friend

Former Employee – worked at Citrix Systems

Pros – Excellent benefits and reasonable salaries

Cons – This is a company that can't figure out what to do now that their legacy product has peaked.

Advice to Senior Management – Figure out what you want to do now tghat the company is increasingly less relevant

No, I would not recommend this company to a friend

Former Employee – worked at Citrix Systems

Pros – Seemingly good reputation from the outside looking in.

Cons – Highly political. Senior management has poor communication. Getting closer to competing directly with Microsoft and it is unclear how Citrix will adapt and maneuver.

Advice to Senior Management – Stop playing golf.

No, I would not recommend this company to a friend