Polycom Reviews

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

Pros – decent benefits and pay (middle of the range). the people you work with are generally fun and trustworthy.

Cons – So many---clueless executive staff, no accountability for their bad decisions, brutal work environment and culture (I've never seen so many people get fired so quickly), inept CEO who blames everyone else around him, nasty emails from leaders are the norm, terrible financial performance, no merit or bonuses, and if you see HR on your floor--there's another layoff, which happens every quarter. Engineering HR is terrible to deal with and very hierachal...unless you're a VP, they won't talk to you.

Advice to Senior Management – clean house, start over or sell the company--it's been on a downward spiral for 18 months and getting worse. your workforce is very, very unhappy.

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

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

Pros – Pretty much nothing. Free snacks maybe. Used to have really good people...

Cons – Used to have excellent engineers; replaced by junior developers who have no idea what they are doing.

Management by fear and intimidation. Performance reviews based on feedback from other managers who have no idea about what you do and don't even try to seek input from the right people. Wonder how this people manage to stick around?

Nothing in terms of career advancement and planning.

Sweatshop mentality; management demands/expects 24/7 work with no rewards/recognition/compensation. Management makes technical decisions! These are people that used to be poor engineers!

Whomever gives this company a high rating has not worked anywhere else and doesn't know any better.

Advice to Senior Management – What can you tell them? They won't do anything to fix the problems they themselves have created!

No, I would not recommend this company to a friend

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

Pros – They pay in US currency

Cons – A culture of fear, intimidation, and threats. Do not even waste your time to interview

Advice to Senior Management – Fire your managers and start over - the culture is very sick (bad)

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

Former Employee – worked at Polycom full-time

Pros – There's free snacks in the breakroom

Cons – -Terrible work/life balance
-Terrible culture, culture it's all about playing the blame game rather than fixing the problem. Management always asks "who did it" rather than "what happened and how can we solve it"
-People work hard in fear of losing their jobs, burning out fast
-I've had to work weekends...sometimes at 6:00AM
-Forced PTO
-Incredibly disorganized, no processes in place, no clear direction, silo-ed efforts
-Not really a reputable company that says "WOW" on your resume.

Advice to Senior Management – Fix your company culture, people are motivated by fear, which never really works out in the long run...
Have a clearer direction and facilitate more teamwork

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

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

Pros – Technology, people, products, good pay (bribe).

Cons – A management team who don't have a clue. Strategy changes every month. Need to decide what they want to be when they grow up. Keep throwing the words cloud and software about, but have no practical strategy around how to get to market. Andy Miller the CEO has an ego the size of the grand canyon, minus the intelligence. Add to that the CMO Kate Hutchison who doesn't even understand basic Marketing 101. A control freak who lacks leadership and wouldn't know the first thing about how to sell if it came and slapped her in the face. HR is a joke - making employees take PTO when it suits the bottom line. No culture building. Just tragic.

Advice to Senior Management – Fire the senior management team. Go back to innovation, and producing products that companies want. Sort out the cloud strategy before its too late.

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

Current Employee – been working at Polycom full-time

Pros – Has a great name in the market although I don't know why. Still good people here but they are leaving like rats on a sinking ship

Cons – I’m going to echo a lot of the reviews that have been done but I think it’s important to fire for effect here and make sure the points get across.

Management at this company manages by fear:

I have seen a lot of my co-workers called in and let go without any warning because their manager stopped liking them or needed a scapegoat. The company is in a constant state of layoffs or “limited restructures”. The culture of Fear is the rule here and used to keep all those to still working here in line. HR here is a puppet of upper management.

The CEO moved the company down from the east bay to off 237 and then has an office built in San Francisco so he doesn’t have to commute; all because it was mentioned in an article that Polycom wasn’t a Silicon Valley company because of it’s (East Bay) location.

No vision or direction:

Anything beyond three months is long term planning and non-existent. Their once technology edge is now gone and other companies are taking it’s place. CEO is a salesman and the culture is totally sales driven. Engineering is dealing with competing priorities and is stressed by not enough good people, no clear direction and unrealistic deadlines. A lot of the work is being sent outside the US. The culture doesn’t foster innovation especially when fear is concerned. Most of my management is busy playing CYA and politics, something demanded by engineering management.

No life outside the company:

First you only get two weeks of PTO a year and most of that is allocated/directed by management to be taken to reduce the liability and make their bottom line look better. Many of my co-workers are in the hole for PTO without the ability to make it up for time with their family. During these mandated vacations you are still expected to work. More than once I have been in the office and in meetings during my PTO. Speaking of Family, any outside life is frowned upon. You are expected to be “on” and available all the time; weekends, holidays, nights, this is all company time. One of the old “perks” was being able to work from home from time to time since video was so pervasive there; this is no longer the case. Not only are you expected to “on” but you are also expected to be at the office at all times.

After all this most of my co-workers and I are looking for positions outside the company.

Advice to Senior Management – Replace the CEO and most of the management. Treat the employees with respect and get rid of the culture of fear.

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

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

Pros – Coworkers have a "we're all into this together" attitude; very little backstabbing or distrust--genuninely like my coworkers and most people do; good base pay; great employee stock purchase program; great new building and amenities.

Cons – In order of how bad they are: the executive team; brutal hours and expectations; terrible bonuses or non-existent; mandated PTO to save costs; stock is worthless; no career development or growth; hire VPs from huge companies who don't want to do any work themselves; very much a culture of fear; constant layoffs; completely inconsistent messaging...I could keep going

Advice to Senior Management – Clean house with the executives--they have no accountability for their own decisions. Employees are blamed for their decisions once they realize they do not work and have made bad decisions. The executives recently rewarded themselves with huge equity bonuses (available publicly on the website) for terrible quarters of performance. Meanwhile, hundreds of employees were laid off. This is a frightening environment and many people comment about how they get that nervous sick feeling in their stomch when they see the building in the distance while they are making the (averge of 1 hour) commute to the office in the morning. Who wants to keep working like that? Nobody wants to work these hours for almost no bonus, worthless equity, days of PTO that is taken away from you and no career development. The executives are elitist and make terrible decisions, yet it's Analysts and Managers who get fired when the numbers are bad. We have become a Sales comany that happens to have engineers around. I've never worked at a company where so many people disliked the environment or had such lack of faith in the executive team. Many people in our HQ at San Jose are looking for jobs. Figure out your messaging, it changes daily and nobody knows what our strategy is as a company. R&D needs to compe out with products that aren't such giant heavy things...nobody is buying them.

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

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

Pros – At one point when I first started 3 years ago, it was a pretty fun place to work. It was more relaxed, even the executives were a little quirky as you would expect from a tech company. The technology direction was exciting (an office-less company)...generally people were pretty happy, except for a few pockets in some functions, notably Finance.

Cons – Now 3 years later, it's a completely different company and none of it good. The executive team is largely inexperienced and has been unfortunately sadly disappointing in its results despite doubling in size. A good junk (apprx a week) of your PTO will be MANDATED--in other words, it will be taken from your PTO bank...making it impossible to plan any real trips. There is a culture of fear and a constant "witch hunt" attitude from the leaders. VPs are hired left and right and people are often promoted after 6 months because their manager worked with them at a previous job. But MANY people are fired or quit within their first year. It's impossible to describe the culture because there really isn't one. Work-life balance is non-existent and frankly, looked down upon. The executives have amnesia about their home terrible decisions and are quick to blame low levels employees when something they decide (with nobody's input but their own) fails miserably. The organization feels completely disorganized with no clear direction, a strategy nobody can articulate. We recently won a first-place market share--which the company acts like it means we are now on our road to massive sales. But the numbers don't prove it, all the numbers show is a company on the edge between oblivion and irrelevance. Sales leader is completely self-protective and quick to blame Marketing, Engineering, anyone but themselves for poor performance. The organization communicates multiple contradictory messages in the same quarter bordering on outright lying to employees. What's more surprising, they pretend as if employees don't notice.

Advice to Senior Management – We notice, and joke around, about the completely contradictory messages and decisions (PTO burn so we don't have to do layoffs....then we do massive layoffs 2 months later, just ONE example). Stop conducting massive layoffs when people are running for the door. Stop throwing equity at the executives and VPs that people are clearly running from. Stop beating up the lowest level employees. Stop blaming everyone but Sales for Sales terrible performance. Stop promoting people who have only worked there for 6 months. Stop worrying about how everyone dresses (this is not an investment bank). Stop with the hair-on-fire approach about everything. If you think employees aren't unhappy--think again.

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

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

Pros – There are some really talented and great people in this company, who constitutes the past success of the company.

Cons – The executive team is very short sighted and is overly loaded, they do not have a clue about how to move this company forward

Advice to Senior Management – Keep the dev team small and efficient, and make them focused.

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

Former Employee – worked at Polycom full-time for more than 10 years

Pros – 1. You will have plenty of opportunities to “fight fires” –
     without any emotional or monetary recognition.
2. Your personal life will be respected –
     relationships between HR and upper management are encouraged.
3. They foster a positive work environment –
     where Dilbert and Office Space references, posters, etc. abound.
4. You will have compensation stability –
     no raises of any kind for three years.
5. You will receive innovation recognition –
     Not one of the ideas given on the internal website by employees have ever been implemented.
6. There is plenty of career advancement –
    10+ year employees are not even considered for management positions, whereas the
     employees that have been there for a few months, and know where to please the boss, are
     expeditiously promoted.
7. You will be a valued team member –
     since the team was created for the sole purpose of promoting a new manager.
8. We promote from within –
     They will hire the CEO of a competitor as something less, then a year later, will make him CEO.
9. You will have job flexibility –
    Besides doing your current job title, (which would be #0 on this list,)
    you will have the “opportunity” to:
      a. Replace (not help mind you,) the entire manufacturing department, (test, qa, inspection,
          repair, you name it.)
      b. Be a part-time Software QA Engineer
      c. Be a Test Network Design Engineer
      d. Be a part-time Training Instructor
      e. Be a part-time Documentation Specialist
      f. Be a ½ time (but actually it’s full time) Technical Support Engineer
      g. Be the site Janitor, cleaning out, and sorting every single lab and storage closet in the place
   For the entire year before you are “no longer needed.”

Cons – 1. Absolutely nothing. It is the greatest company to have ever been in business.

Advice to Senior Management – 1. Absolutely nothing. C-level’s walk on water, and will show it.

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