Akamai Reviews

Pros

Time off policy means you can take off as much time as you need for life/work balance.
Upper management has an open dialogue with the rank and file.
Benefits are top-notch.

Cons

Most employees seem very smart but they are also very stubborn and discourage alternative ideas.
New software development is actively discouraged in favor of re-using the old sauce.
Production failures are so rampant that employees have to take a course to learn how to manage them.
New employees are on their own.
People here can be downright mean. Akamai needs to hire more professionals.

Advice to Senior Management

The board decided to freeze all salaries for the rank and file but not for themselves--that is, until someone pointed it out to the whole company.
Create a career development program.

Pros

Its a job.
Depending on which department you are in you can get away with working part time for full time salary.
If you are in the chosen departments money flows like water.
Good benefits and a good work/life balance.

Cons

Layoffs(doubled some peoples workload) even when the company has record profits, record revenues, and record amount of customers.
No salary increases even when the company has record profits, record revenues, and record amount of customers.
The J team clearly runs the company with short term financial goals in mind.
An extreme lack of communication between groups, employees and management.
Per usual with most companies a few torch bearers push/pull the rest along.

Advice to Senior Management

Employees are the strength of the company as with most companies, actually listen to them, that would be nice. You need to capitalize on the entrepreneur within the employees. Why for heaven's sake would you not have salary increases for the good employees? Seriously, I have worked nights, weekends, etc.. everything you would expect to be rewarded for, but I am told to be thankful I have a job without a salary increase, way to go, now I no longer put the extra effort in and instead I use that effort to find another job. "get the wrong people off the bus"... how about getting the peple who brought the wrong people in off the bus?

Pros

Most people in the company, especially in engineering, are excellent at what they do. They are smart and intelligent and it is hard to find mediocrity. I was with the company for more than 6 years working with engineering, support and services and thoroughly enjoyed it.

Cons

In recent years there has been hiring from outside the company for several positions in services at manager/director levels. The passion is lacking in teams led by those people and it is "just a job". Not bad if you like routine work, but it is very frustrating if you are a talented innovator because your voice is not heard outside the team.

Advice to Senior Management

Reinvigorate the spirit of Akamai and make it entrepreneurial and innovative again. There has'nt been a substantial innovation coming out of the company for a long time. It has mostly been old wine in a new bottle with the latest service offerings.

Pros

Smart and very talented set of people
Close to MIT campus, Easy to get into the academia vibration
Pay is decent

Cons

Office space is cluttered.
Technical Support service is very slow .
Feels like a typical 8 to 5 desk job for a developer position (but extends well into nights ... at times)

Advice to Senior Management

Keep up the good effort. Add more social techie events to mix work and relax instead of work , work ....work.

Pros

Highly motivated and intelligent people that are committed.

Cons

There are no obvious downsides to Akamai.

Advice to Senior Management

Invest in products and services that distinguish Akamai from the competition as the marketplace is getting crowded and commodity driven..

Pros

1. A good technology company with prospects for future growth.
2. I have seen considerable growth in the past few years.
3. Benefits package has improved quite a bit in the past few years.
4. Decent work-life balance, except during production issues.
5. Strong top-level management, and talent pool.

Cons

1. The stock price has taken a beating, but I hope it will recover when the market rebounds.
2. Work-from-home is discouraged a bit. This may not apply to all the groups though.
3. Fast-paced environment and limited opportunities for training and learning new skills outside the group.
4. As for any service company, production issues need at most attention, and can be demanding.

Advice to Senior Management

Hire good talent at all levels, not just at the top-level.

Pros

Opportunity for advancement and to have an impact in the company.

Cons

Can be hard to break into cliques of long time / pre-ipo employees. Inadequate job training for new hires - it can be a highly sink-or-swim environment.

Advice to Senior Management

More communication on strategic direction to employees

Pros

very cool technology that is easy to get excited about.

Cons

disorganization between different divisions of the company
compensation and performance reviews are scarce

Advice to Senior Management

incentive plans should be based on the expectations of the job - not a one size fits all

Pros

On top of the CDN industry, its an amazing perspective of the Internet and the future of technology. Lots of smart, motivated, competent and highly respectable individuals to work with.

Cons

As the company grew past the startup culture, and the additional layers of middle management and restructuring took place, much of what made the company an exciting place to work gave way to additional politics and bureaucracy. Much of the operations can be greatly improved with some of the well known industry standards and real project management methodologies.

Advice to Senior Management

Consider changing internal operations teams to internal consulting organizations that assign costs other organizations put on operations in terms of time, use of capEX and other overhead.

Pros

Lots of smart people from MIT and other great places; a very unique product; a clear market leader; a great customer base - you provide a valuable service for most of the major web sites.

Cons

Not that much innovation going on at the moment. Akamai is largely selling whatever was developed years ago. If you are not in the main Cambridge office, it is hard to get things done. Some good people have left for this reason.

Advice to Senior Management

More innovation. More empowerment for remote offices. Don't run the company like it is IBM - run it as it used to be run.