Aravo Reviews

Pros

Challenging problems to solve
Great People
Great Location

Cons

Under financed
Strategic direction not aligned with management focus

Advice to Senior Management

Allow more leadership from below

Pros

Smart engineers, small company feel and agile (Scrum) methodology, informal, intelligent work mates, good QA. Pay is market rate. Benefits suck.

Cons

Management are NOT technical, they are 'Sales guys' ...they have big gold Rolexes and loud voices and talk about 'buyout' and 'early exit' all the time! The 'severance' is brutal, minimal and sudden! Benefits and HR suck! :o|

Advice to Senior Management

We dont't need you! Get out of the way!

Pros

Able to spend money like it is free

Cons

Too many to write here. The management is unfocused and does not understand the market. I've seen great people let go in order to hire friends. Too many promises, never seems to deliver as promised. Look under the covers and talk to existing customers (un-prepped) and past customers. Then explore their vision and see if it matches with your needs.

Advice to Senior Management

Hire people that know the market

Pros

The space is primed to take off
Aravo is mature in the space
Aravo is located in a great location with in SF Financial district
Benefits are improved

Cons

Senior management lacks experience and understanding of the space to take the company forward
Communication of strategy is poor
Implementations are extremely long due to a bad underlying data structure
Opportunity for advancement is limited unless you are part of the executive teams old boy network
Difficult to do business with when contracting/negotiating with a new client

Advice to Senior Management

Aravo needs to bring in executives from within the space who understands the trends and direction thus allowing them to properly set vision for successfully moving forward, otherwise a sinking ship.

Pros

- fast past environment
- lots of latitude in job description
- great peers for the most part

Cons

- change of direction is difficult
- long sales cycles
- lower comp packages compared to others
- poor benefits package

Advice to Senior Management

- pick a direction and keep to it
- focus on closing loop of long sales cycle

Pros

Aravo has had great funding and potential to become a leader in the space. Also, the Agile development process is solid.

Cons

Small company, with the ego of a huge company. Lack of involvement or focus by the CEO. The executive team promises big, but under-delivers. Bonuses are never paid. Small customer-base. Product and sales direction changes too often. Feel like there is distrust between management and employees. Unsure of new executive team members.

Advice to Senior Management

Good luck.

Pros

Management lets teams experiment and own their own success or failure without micro-managing.
Culture promotes teamwork and leadership.
Company has been around 10+ years and is very stable.
Investors are utterly amazing.
Great people!

Cons

Space is still maturing and there were some slow sales years early on, but seems to finally be taking off and F500 customers are eager for the solution.

Advice to Senior Management

Stay focused on strategy as it is working.

Pros

Agile development process
Java development shop in downtown SF
Talented engineering teams and peer-driven engineering process
New office space is great

Cons

Company strategy doesn't seem to work
Senior management does not communicate well to the company
Engineers are too involved in the product strategy (God, am I really saying this?)
Too much consultant language

Advice to Senior Management

Define a plan, communicate it and don't change it based on department preferences that doen't support the company strategy.

Pros

Located in downtown San Francisco. Good implementation of Agile product development.

Cons

Poor management with very little sharing of information. A lot of politics within the management team.

Advice to Senior Management

Do not let engineers define the product direction and strategy.

Pros

Agile Scrum development shop where I have plenty of opportunities to work on the latest technology stack, including GWT in an enterprise SaaS environment. All engineers are given good opportunities to make decisions.

Cons

Too early to tell if recent management changes will result in better sales momentum. I don't have any visibility into where we are selling and how we are doing. We are a small company and I don't think the CEO knows my name.

Advice to Senior Management

I'd like to know more about how we are selling our solutions and where so that i can be more effective when trying to challenge or support some of the product ideas we are making in engineering. The 2 week scrums can be a little grueling at times.