ARRIS Reviews

Pros

good salary and benefits
lots of process experience
respected within industry
lots of opportunities at contributor and middle management level
ability to network within broader industry

Cons

overly hardware focused, software business lacks investment and sales focus
overly process focused - takes up huge portion of workday and detracts from time that might otherwise be spent of business development and coming up with new ideas

Advice to Senior Management

make decisions faster, be bolder, be more innovative, kill or sell off products that company does not really intend to grow, make sales organization more agile

Pros

The employees are great to work with, Benifits are good, pretty much any time you need to take off is approved

Cons

Management seems to lack direction. Nessessary changes take longer than they should. To much emphasis on improving, but not enough action.

Advice to Senior Management

Bring more innovation, best practices, and make decisions. Inform the employees about direction, short term, mid term, and long term goals with status updates as how the progress is going.

Pros

Good pay given current economy and benefits (health, annual bonus/raise plan, stock purchase plan)
Standard holidays and PTO, vacation purchase option, plus sick/personal days
Casual dress
Reasonably flexible hours and WFH opportunities, depending on situation and manager
Overtime/weekend work occurs, but not too often
Some recent attempts using agile/modern practices
Free coffee/tea/soda, Friday donuts/bagels

Cons

The unit has lost serious business in recent years. Some products have been discontinued, and other new products were developed, but shelved. Some customers dropped the products and began building their own systems instead.

Cost control measures applied through decreasing business and the recession resulted in staff reduction; US positions have either been closed or moved offshore. Attrition of good people at all levels is a serious issue.

Can be a difficult place to succeed, to seek and accept new responsibility, and to take calculated risks. Hard-skills training is scarce.

Engineering practices are weak. There is a lack of standard methodology. The various ISO processes are waterfall-oriented. Software methodology is basically "code and fix". Very little new development.

Performance reviews are not based on any quantifiable factors related to an individual's actual work products; they are more like personality reviews.

Advice to Senior Management

Re-evaluate the strategic plan against some good, SMART objectives.

Bring all the functions under one P&L center. Set up a ROWE based on unit profits.

Hire a consulting firm with a solid track record in software organizations to reorganize.

Start over from the bottom up with small teams and lightweight management. Adopt a 'servant leader' or 'inverted pyramid' culture.

Commit to being agile, welcome change and strive for constant improvement.

Pros

Free drinks and health insurance package is fair

Cons

Bad communication and sweat shop

Advice to Senior Management

Don't sell something that doesn't work

Pros

very good at hardware manufacturing. wide range of products which fully support industry standards. getting a big boost from docsis-3 uptake.

Cons

can't manage software development. believes that software can be created just like cable modems, even down to trying to us an ISO 9000 process. individual employees have no idea of what the corporate roadmap is.

Advice to Senior Management

understand hardware and software are different and require different management. create an incentive for sales force to actually sell software products.

Pros

good products, good people, good benefits, great industry.

Cons

poor comp plan, limited career growth, too many process and approvals required. Need to empower sales people by allowing them to get creative. Too many process' makes the company slow to react to competiton and customers.

Advice to Senior Management

Stop with the CYA process'...It impedes creativity and growth in the Company. Empower and compensate your sales people and they will go to war for you! Many exec mngt worry about completing the process' vs. growing the business.

Pros

Good working in involvement. Flexible work hours

Cons

Annual review process could be improved.

Pros

Close proximity. Flexible work schedule environment.

Cons

ARRIS Executive and PLM management has no strategy any more. It is all knee-jerk management with the Senior Directors and Directors jumping into line without raising a word of doubt; then going off to complain to subordinates about the lack of direction. Of course, six months down the road the Executives constantly second-guess their direction and reverse course; losing all of investment in projects made to date. The only thing they seem to be able to follow through on is selling products, at a loss, moving jobs to China, and buying companies losing money a discount; with no plan for how to use them. All this while, quadrupling, Human Resources, Accounting, and IT, while slashing R&D. Sales, Marketing, PLM appear to completely unable to determine which way the company should be going but that doesn't prevent them from providing ever changing lists of what to develop. This is a cyclic process that is often seen as a company swirls down the drain.

Advice to Senior Management

Perform real analyses and quit make decisions based upon popularity and politics. If you want higher margins, you have to sell products at a profit. The bottom line is that It doesn't matter how many of something you sell, if you sell it at a loss. One of the many accounts that have been hired might be able to explain it.

Pros

Decent pay and learned a lot

Cons

Work life balance was terrible
Management treated employees poorly and were insensitive to their needs
Never had an opportunity to take vacation

Advice to Senior Management

Improve the work life balance and appreciate your employees.

Pros

Challenging environment.
Flexible work hours
Comparable pay.

Cons

No respect to employees
Unfair treatment by managers
No decision making