Ariba Reviews

Pros

As an engineer, one can work on stuff that has a big impact on the world of b2b commerce. Big customers and high volume cloud commerce site. There is pressure no doubt, but high rewards for successful folks too.

Cons

Building and operating a 24x7 cloud commerce site can come with its share of challenges and pressures. Distributed offices across the united states and now in many other parts of the world (thanks to the various acquisitions) makes collaboration harder.

Advice to Senior Management

Need more tools and processes to help with collaboration between different offices. Also - more training for new engineers would help them get effective sooner

Pros

Work life balance
Office located at the center of the city
Good salary and benefits

Cons

Life revolves around BUG FIXING
Tight noose of "processes" around your neck
Few big-bosses control the show. You are just a insignificant worker. Do as I tell you attitude.
No "risky" projects and everything is risky
Technology belongs to Paleolithic era. Good luck finding your next job.

Advice to Senior Management

Please find some interesting work for the poor folks down here.
Please stop judging people based on number of bugs fixed.

Pros

Good Benefits
Decent Salary
Good environment and stable company ,peace of mind is there on future.

Cons

Worst work,only bug fixing and no exposure to any technologies.
ARIBA is simply
A->ALL
R->ROUND
I->INTENSIVE
B->BUG FIXING
A->ACADEMY.
ARIBA:-ALL ROUND INTENSIVE BUG FIXING ACADEMY

India IDC is currently like a GARBAGE BOX FOR ALL JUNK WORK
No confidence on Indian employees in this organisation.
US Designations: Software engineer because they work on good things in the product
India Designations: Consultant engineer as its only support work, kind of donkey work here.

Advice to Senior Management

All good work is in done in USA,Please give India IDC also some decent work.

Pros

-Great vision for commerce (competitors just follow Ariba)
-Great people at junior and mid-levels

Cons

-Horrible executive team (small club milks company via exhorbitant stock-based comp) and maintains nearly all senior positions for small inner circle

Advice to Senior Management

Cronyism is apparent to all - please start promoting true leaders to senior positions to imporve the culture

Pros

big customers, good software, competence, good people, friendly, education, offsites

Cons

quite a lot of traveling, demanding in terms of time

Pros

I think they have a Pro Employee attitude:

- When the recession hit there were wage freezes but they also doubled the 401(k) matching. Not many companies that I know made that kind of effo

Cons

- Work-life balance can get a little out of control sometimes, such is the life of a sales organization though

Pros

Decent salary
Good cab facility
Good Lunch
Good Snacks and beverages.

Cons

Don't be misled by false promises in interview, Its all only Customer support.Even software engineers are also into customer support nothing else.
Mostly working on proprietary xml files only.
No work on Java.Java coding is done very rarely here.
High work pressure.Daily updates are a must here.
High Bureaucracy and politics in this company.

Advice to Senior Management

There should some little development work at-least in India IDC.

Pros

- Work location is in the heart of the city
- Trains you to work in a high pressure environment
- Forget PMBOK, you get to work in a new process framework altogether. Makes it more interesting :)

Cons

- Some senior management folks are maniacs who think they know everything. Scrum planning with them is a pain.
- Policies are thrust down your throat from Sunnyvale with no handover. Sitting in IDC, you are left wondering how to justify the new process changes to engineering teams
- Zero growth, except if you are in HR I suppose. Actual incident: In the last review cycle, HR announced that all promotions are being deferred to the next April cycle. Then a quite promotion happened in the cycle when no promotions are planned for the one of the HR managers to a director.
- Little to no feedback on what to do to get to the next level
- Engineering is the owner for most tasks, but you will be asked questions on why tasks aren't on track (which they will never be since the company believes in operating in a highly resource constrained manner)

Advice to Senior Management

- Hand off some control to IDC. Creating new processes on the fly and throwing it across the seas is not the right thing to do.
- If you want to defer promotions for the whole company, how is it a HR manager gets promoted? Have a uniform policy for everyone, otherwise you are just asking for it.

Pros

Great benefits and if you are in with the "in crowd" in HR you're good

Cons

The VP of HR signs off and changes all raises and reviews and has 0 professional discussions w/anyone.
She's too busy shopping online in the morning and talking about hiring good nannies.
There is NO training or employee development
Counting myself 5 people left HR in 18 mos and the group size in Pittsburgh is 16 people (33%)

Advice to Senior Management

Find people who understand the term "leadership" and people development and hire them. You're overpaying your Sr. Mgmt and getting nothing in return but disgruntled people, high turnover and apathy.

Pros

Office is well within the city
Good facilities.
Good Opportunity to learn process orientation.

Cons

ITS ONLY TECH SUPPORT HERE EVEN FOR ENGINEERS,DON'T BE MISTAKEN.
ENGINEERS ARE ALWAYS GIVEN TECH SUPPORT AND BUG FIXING ALL THRU THE YEAR.
People who have stayed here for 2-3 years are completely out of touch with all technologies.
Not a place if you are technical person.
Managers are only tracking issues with no technical insight of the product,because of which the product lacks any technical improvement.
Huge process overhead which blocks virtually everything in the company.
Work schedule is very tight

Advice to Senior Management

Time-lines need to be more realistic,stop hiring managers without any technical knowledge at all.