Akamai Reviews in San Francisco, CA Area

I have been working at Akamai full-time for more than a year

Pros – This review pertains to my experience in engineering working with folks in Cambridge, MA and San Mateo, CA.

Akamai is a great place to work for engineers who are passionate about distributed systems and network security.

1. Work along side some of the best minds you will ever work with in your career. Beyond all benefits and perks, this is the single best reason to be at Akamai.

2. Terrific opportunity to grow and make an impact at all levels.

3. The original DNA of the company that was set by the founders from MIT is alive and well. There is a culture of innovation.

4. Use the latest technologies (including open source) - skills picked up here are applicable across the industry. This is important as you don't want to be an expert on proprietary stuff no one outside cares about.

5. Managers are very technical and do a great job of managing a skilled set of engineers.

6. IT department doesn't come in the way. Just walk in and pick up whatever equipment you need and get on with your job.

7. Unlimited vacation policy.

Cons – There will always be things to complain about. No company is perfect.

Yes, I would recommend this company to a friend – I'm optimistic about the outlook for this company

I worked at Akamai full-time for more than a year

Pros – Work life balance
Good people to work with

Cons – This is based on my personal experience - others mileage may vary ...

- support overload of existing production systems - keep firefighting
- rampant production failures leave little time for personal growth as a software engineer... unless you have come in with a lot of experience from the industry and all this doesn't bother you.
- too little time to write actual code (unless you are too brilliant and can code up something very quickly)
- Architect does things on his own terms and overrides tech lead and manager; often times tech lead and manager are as clueless as the new hire. Poor mentoring.
- Terrible for entry level engineer
- Too many things to know before feeling productive - whole lot of complexity in products
- Immigration process is slow for entry level folks (F-1 students moving to H-1B -- take care; clarify about green card immigration process during interview.)
- Upward mobility not so good, takes 4-5 years to get promoted (since there are only 3 levels for software engineers) no matter how hard you worked; till then keep growing linearly in terms of compensation.
- Lot of old guard - people store company knowledge in their heads, not sufficient documentation, you can get tired of going and asking for every small thing (even after spending 2 years in the company) -- this should be resolved by better training for new hires.
- Old legacy systems in place -- need to use more open source.
- Not as competitive in compensation and perks as other top silicon valley companies.
- Conservative east coast management - stingy in spending.
- record profits, record quarters -- but still cut down on perks and bonuses to employees who are main assets.
- projects are under-staffed. very painful at times even when the shortage of staff affects critical release cycles by a big margin. they do not want to spend!

I would look at better places in silicon valley to work for if you are a new or a recent grad.

No, I would not recommend this company to a friend

I have been working at Akamai full-time for more than 3 years

Pros – Depending on your manager, telecommute can be encouraged or frowned upon.

Cons – Most of people only keep to themselves. You never know when and who will stab you from behind even just when you think everything is going alright. A lot of managers are extremely short-sighted. They bend forward and take every requirement from Product team and turn them into a CR (change request, just like a bug) without even considering the overall impact to the system and pushing back when necessary. I guess that the manager's performance is evaluated by the no. of CRs they close. That's why they want to open/close as many as possible.

There is hardly any chance for advancement. Unless you're one of the boss's pets, you're pretty much stuck in the same position for many years until either your boss moves up or you can't take it and get moving yourself. Advice for the potential employees: work hard to get the level as high as possible since it'll be very hard to move up once you join.

Advice to Senior Management – Do an overall audit of the first line managers. Interview employees and understand if there are anything unpleasant with the same boss. When you get consistent answers, you know who the weeds are.

No, I would not recommend this company to a friend

I worked at Akamai as an intern for less than a year

Pros – Good pay ,work culture, Challenging tasks..Medium sized company

Cons – It could be better organized for interns and good if there wud have been a designated hr

Yes, I would recommend this company to a friend

I have been working at Akamai full-time for more than 8 years

Pros – Solid engineers with a serious operational outlook.

Cons – A large company with multiple engineering offices across the globe, can sometimes be a challenge with distributed teams or reporting structure.

Yes, I would recommend this company to a friend

I have been working at Akamai

Pros – a lot of growth can happen

Cons – lot of competition in this sector

Advice to Senior Management – na

Yes, I would recommend this company to a friend

I have been working at Akamai

Pros – Generally good people who care about the work, which is cutting edge for internet. Opportunity to advance and learn if you want it. Innovation is valued.

Cons – Company is in transition now from being a startup in early 1998 to operating more on the big business standard model now. That can be a difficult transition if you value the sort of meritocracy and individual initiative that you have in startup situations. More departmentalization and compartmentalization, less whole view big effort.

Advice to Senior Management – Do not let the corporate politics and interdepartmental departmental struggles for resources and priorities (that characterize bigger businesses) kill the Akamai startup spirit.

I have been working at Akamai

Pros – Lots of exposure related to customer integration projects. Short term and variety of projects.

Cons – Very quick tunaround times required often less flexibility towards self learning. Very fast pace.

Advice to Senior Management – Create more collaborative and close knit teams for better knowledge sharing

Yes, I would recommend this company to a friend

I have been working at Akamai

Pros – Exposure to many types of leading edge technologies
Place to learn all about the internet

Cons – Very demanding
Too much politics at times

Yes, I would recommend this company to a friend

I worked at Akamai

Pros – Akamai is a great company to work for in terms of talent and the kind of work they do. The colleagues you will work with and extremely bright, talented and motivated. You will be exposed to a lot of different areas in the Internet world and there's a lot to learn. Most groups are open and you can always just go walk to someone and ask about their product.

Cons – Career development is almost non existent. Moving between different levels of engineering doesn't really matter much. There's still a lot of old guard in the company and it's not easy to compete against them in terms of promotions (which in a way is good). A lot has changed in the recent years with a number of acquisitions and the company is no longer as tight knit as before.

Benefits are nothing to write home about.

Advice to Senior Management – No idea. I'm bad at advice!

Yes, I would recommend this company to a friend