Avid Technology Reviews

Pros

Great product line, smart and intelligent engineers, passionate employees, excellent benefits, flexible schedule, competitive salaries, on-site gym and cafeteria, and location.

Cons

Increased off-shoring of engineering work, execution to meet business goals lack internal infrastructure to meet them, understaffed due to numerous lay-offs, employee activities is a thing of the past, cross-functional teams are driven by their own agenda regardless of other dependencies, no room for growth in engineering, do not promote within, good senior employees terminated or left, and the current senior staff needs an overhaul to get the company back into profitibility.

Advice to Senior Management

Walk the talk. Actions speak louder than words. Employees in general are extremely dissatisfied. Morale is at a record low and it's no longer a good place to work like it once was 5-8 years ago. Treat your employees as if they were your own children, wth sensitivity and compassion.

Pros

Excellent engineers working on amazing, bleeding-edge technology. Folks who are passionate about audio and video. Engineers and support staff who genuinely care about their customers, their work and helping them achieve incredible things.

Cons

In the past four years, I have gone from 4 layers between me and the CEO, to 7! It is an extremely top heavy organization. Upper management has no connection with the workforce and the people who have literally put their blood, sweat and tears into building an amazing company. It is now run by corporate lackeys who are slowly picking the company apart, selling it off and outsource engineers and qa with amazing skills and experience for entry-level, out of college engineers with zero experience in video or audio editing, encoding/decoding, etc.. It has been extraordinarily depressing to be part of this downfall a great, innovative American company.

Advice to Senior Management

Leave. I beg you, take your golden parachutes and stop destroying this company.

Pros

The customer base is outstanding particularly in the professional space. The products as a rule are pretty amazing in their capability and the company is well managed from an operational perspective.

Cons

The market is evolving faster than the company is moving. Competitive tools and solutions are lighter weight, tablet and internet based and Avid has a large traditional installed base. The CEO has the proper vision of the future but the company may be a bit too risk averse to get there. The internal infrastructure can be heavy weight.

Advice to Senior Management

Multiple layoffs over the past few years, decreasing revenue and off shoring have left a chasm between mgmt and the employee base. The internal operations and philosophy while marketed as customer centric need to have product teams beyond the executive team with more direct customer contact. Biggest issue is to evolve with the market.

Pros

The people who are on the ground floor, getting real work done developing products are the most talented and passionate people out there. These people are also the users of the products and are deeply connected with the rest of the user base. Only the people and the innovative products they created made the job worth it.

Cons

Due to annual layoffs and management demanding more productivity and longer hours from a continually decreasing work force, there is NO trust in the competence of upper management. There is NO trust in job security. There is NO morale left. There is NO goodwill left for upper management from the people who actually develop the products. Products are selling, the work force is being slashed and the company still can't make a profit? Upper management continues to cut from the bottom and promote at the top at a rate that is so fast, the typical employee has given up on trying to memorize the ever-shifting hierarchy. Pretty soon there will be no one left to make any products to sell. Imagine a company made up of only execs patting themselves on the back while leaching what is left of a once great company until it's sucked dry. That is the future of Avid.

Advice to Senior Management

Read these reviews! This is what your past and present employees think of you. A child could easily put together the general theme here. Cut from the top, hire at the bottom, get people who actually know the industry to run the company or Avid will die. Long live Digidesign!

Pros

Worked for many years there. strong points:

- Amazing team spirit
- Bleading edge SW developements
-

Cons

Constant restructuration and layoffs and an endless trend of cutting expert position in favor outsourced entry level engineers. Benefits have been cut several time.

Advice to Senior Management

Stop laying off talented engineers and focus on triming middle management instead. Restore some of benefits that where cuted in the past few years (profit sharing, espp, etc...).

Pros

Great products, customer base, and industry. The team members are passionate about the products and the industry which makes working at Avid exciting.

Cons

High customer demands to keep existing products healthy and moving forward with a dwindling team who can keep up with the demands.

Pros

?Camaraderie in the face of adversity .
?Team spirit - Born out of above
?Excellent products
?Great industry to work in

Cons

?Will suck the life from you
?Ridiculous working hrs
?Aggressive management style - US Managers/Directors
?US Hold very tight reins

Advice to Senior Management

Walk the walk! You tell people you care, want to invest in them as they’re your biggest asset –Prove it

Pros

great people, good products, good compensation, flexibility

Cons

Business results are bad and current sr mgmt is unable to fix it. You cannot find profitability via cost cutting only. Off-shoring is over-emphasized and combined with all the layoffs killing morale big time. Many good people have left.

Advice to Senior Management

Fix the business - operational adjustments alone are not enough. Care for the folks left. Stop the aggressive off-shoring initiative before all is lost.

Pros

Colleagues, Avid has some of the best employees an employer could ask for.

Cons

With annual layoffs it has been a rollercoaster on whether or not there is any job security here.

Pros

The people you work with directly are top notch, professional, and knowledgeable. The product lines are amazing. The rest of the "pros" have vanished with the current executive management team.

Cons

The executive management staff has completey and utterly destroyed the morale of the employees and made working in the Daly City office a dismal experience, when it was once an absolutely fantastic environment to work in.