Autonomy Reviews

Pros

Great commission if you are successful

Cons

Lackluster training, huge pressure to perform with little ownership of sales process by others.

Pros

some coworkers great
the idea of some processes good in theory but not working in practice
ability to move around within company

Cons

lack of trust of employees
CEO involved in all decisions no matter how small
can't see the results through the processes

Pros

The one and only advantage in working with this company in India, is you get work from home option with laptop. I'm not sure how long this will exists?

Cons

Middle level managers in India are taught to say "YES" for everything that senior managers from head offices wants to push. These people don't have enough guts to talk back with their opinions and finally had to play dual game with team members and managers,

Even if the head of local operations is sacked out from company, there won't be any dis-appointment with the employees, since he does nothing other than just coming to office daily

No annual or performance appraisal. It would be better to mention No appraisal at all in offer letter.

Though there were days, employees used to feel very good in being such a company, but after acquisition people felt very bad why did we join this company. Management don't spend even a single minute in the growth of local operations.

Beware before you join this company as it might lead you to a slave position

Advice to Senior Management

Not worth mentioning it here, since top management considers Indian managers as slaves

Indian managers will not stop behaving like slaves.

Pros

There's free food in the kitchen and a holiday abroad at Christmas. The company also sponsors a Formula One team, so you might be lucky and get to go to a free practice session. They also sponsor Tottenham Hotspur, so you might be able to go and watch a match.

Oh, there's also a table football game. Because that will cancel out the cons, right?

Cons

As a graduate, do not expect any training. In fact, do not expect very much other than to be placed in front of a PC and given orders! Chances are you will be working alone on some horrific code base that no-one else in the company understands. Good luck with that.

You'll need to learn on the job and under pressure and you will be expected to delivery results however much of your day/night this costs. Most of the projects continually operate in fire-fighting mode because the number of developers is very low. No-one ever has the chance to sit back and say "hey, wouldn't it be better if we changed this bit and did it properly" because they have to fix the bugs TODAY or face a shouting match from superiors.

Software is very much secondary to Autonomy. The goal is sales. Software just gets in the way. This means no emphasis in design, documentation or testing. Or in other words, no value to software guys/gals whatsoever. As a software engineer you are regarded as a button pusher, you have no skill and any software engineer can be replaced by any other (or indeed a new graduate). If you want to become a better software developer, simply don't start here (or come here and then write a book on how not to do things).

Learning on the job is hampered by the firewall. China's censorship policies have nothing on Autonomy. Want to downloads some open-source software? No chance! Want to read documentation? No chance! Do you want to read a blog article explaining your problem? Nope, you're out of luck. The firewall blocks almost everything to the point where you might as well just bring books in and use that. The internet is vastly overrated anyway!

Management can best be characterized as arrogant and technically incompetent. Whatever you can do, they can do better and in half the time. They'll not demonstrate this, but they will use it to try and force you to finish items very quickly, often pressurising you into working very late.

I'll stop there because it says "describe some of the downsides". There's plenty more, but suffice to say this isn't a place I would recommend to others (or my worst enemy for that matter!).

Advice to Senior Management

There's no hope. You can't build a company on the lie of great software when the core is so totally rotten.

Pros

Great potential if the company's "talk track" married up nicely with it's "walk track" . . .hugely valuable IP . ..

Cons

If you want to spend your time growing and developing as a professional; AND if you are interested in working for a management team that will help you do that, steer clear of this pig pen . . . the lack of role clarity, transparency and "autonomy" makes this place a joke -- every single sales person and engineer is looking to leave . . .

Advice to Senior Management

Stop "managing" -- and start "leading". . . ..

Pros

Easy work life.. (old iron mountain type) , no work pressure, like a government job. Nice building, good surroundings. Friday lunches, coffee.!

Cons

Iron mountain India is now called Autonomy India (merger), I am an IRM employee who came over to Autonomy.
When you want to leave Autonomy to go to a different company, be prepared to lose heavily. Remember the IC/RC bonus you were supposed to get? You will not get it any more: if you are in your 2 months notice period. And your bonus for Jan-Dec will be paid next mar/april. So if you want to leave before June 1st, forget the last year's bonus. The 2 months notice period is not something mentioned in the handbook of the company: where it is at will. It is just a HR thing!
Goodbye suckers, and thanks for all the fish. I am out of here in a week!

Advice to Senior Management

Please fix HR and finance policies. Make work interesting. Reward top performers more often. reduce red tape and other overhead. Faster releases. Take peer and manager reviews more often.

Pros

Opportunity to work on a large number of servers.
Free lunches on Fridays

Cons

Overworked, Constant Pressure, No promotions, Thankless

Advice to Senior Management

Recognize the high performing employees and try to retain them.

Pros

Adequate pay.
Free lunch on Fridays.

OK place for a new graduate to get a bit of work experience on the resume.

Cons

Soul sucking, stressful.

Company doesn't at all respect employees free time - they expect you to be available all nights and weekends at their pleasure. Competent employees are rewarded with more work and little else, until they leave. Management appears not to care at all about employee morale, which is very poor.

Pros

Decent Salary, Growing Company, free lunch on Friday and pastries on Wed

Cons

Company is headed by elitist, Cambridge PHD types that value pedigree above experience.
Senior Management micromanages everything such that local CEO's and managers are figureheads and puppets. Nearly every decision must be routed to Lynch or one of the other Politburo members.

Risk taking is discouraged and employees always looking over their shoulders expecting to be fired. Management is always looking to place blame when something goes wrong (which happens frequently) so much effort is spent on CYA instead of fixing root causes.

Company discourages telecommuting and requires employees to be in an office location from 8:30 to 5:30. Low trust environment where company disabled access to all entrances of the building except one and require employees to badge in and out so they can track to make sure you come and leave at the required times.

No raises, piss-poor bonus plan, no stock options or espp plans (except for a few of the elite), meager 401K match.

Absolutely no fun to work there.

Advice to Senior Management

Watch the employees stream out the door as soon as the job market improves...

Pros

The matrix structure means nobody has full control or knowledge of my day-to-day activities. There is freedom as far as what hours I work and what projects I spend my time on. In general, there is not a lot of structure and very little guidance is provided. It's expected that you will figure out what works and get it done. Lots of fun if you enjoy the challenge of being thrown into a tough situation with no idea what you're doing. Difficult problems, smart people, a constant learning experience.

Cons

There is definitely a slave driver mentality with little concern for employees' overall well-being. This results in high turnover as people get burned out. All of the negative comments about the company are based in fact. But most of these conditions can also be positive if you happen to have the attitude and mindset required to fit in.

Advice to Senior Management

Make more of an effort to keep people around. There is a huge loss in efficiency every time we lose someone with irreplaceable knowledge, and this happens far too often.