Blackboard Reviews

Pros

* Entrepreneurial
* Making a difference in teaching and learning around the world
* A dynamic and very smart group of people
* Ability to change strategy on a dime to address the constantly changing needs and demands of the market
* You feel like you are doing well by doing good

Cons

* Constant fast paced environment, can cause burnout
* Not a great work/life balance - company is undertaking a big mission of making a difference in education and that is more then a full time job.
* Constantly adjusting organizational structure, buying companies, or moving into new markets - the company doesn't take a rest

Advice to Senior Management

* Communicate more with employees
* Focus on implementing better internal systems
* Keep moving in the direction you have been headed over the last two years with more openness, greater transparency, and improved standards.

Pros

work / life balance (sometimes)
compensation

Cons

way to decentralized, every product has a different team with different objectives and equal power

the corporate structure is severely backward

senior management doesn't care about broader team interplay

egos and meetings with no real productivity

no innovation, terrible central customer support, many broken internal systems.

they would rather acquire and further screw themselves from the inside out for profit rather than innovate

Advice to Senior Management

You are not the big shots you once were, you are a dinosaur with deep pockets. Focus on fixing internal problems before acquiring more companies and adding to the mess. efficiency and team camaraderie are non existent. fix that first.

Pros

- Great work culture in certain divisions
- Way too top heavy
- Flexible work schedules
- Lots of opportunities to do different kinds of work since there are so many new divisions

Cons

- Culture is slowing changing (negatively) with the recent acquisitions
- Lower pay bracket
- Company is unwilling to "grow up"
- Promotion process is not transparent
- Too matrixed making it hard to make decisions without a lot of hurdles

Advice to Senior Management

- Focus on your clients and integrating your different products and services
- Invest in a cross-company COO
- Focus on reducing silos and creating competing priorities

Pros

Solid management team, decent benefits, good learning environment for self-starters, great colleagues, interesting work

Cons

Overly process oriented, especially in contracts and finance.

Advice to Senior Management

A complete process overhaul is required. Far too many channels to get simple tasks done. Improve client service.

Pros

Full time Job and job security

Cons

Rude customers, Customer Service Outsourcing

Pros

By working to improve education for everyone, people feel good about working at Blackboard. The company offers good benefits and work/life balance.

Cons

Some of the downsides come from ever changing organizational structure - due primarily to ongoing acquisitions and mergers. New teams are formed all the time, but that can be a good thing from an experiential standpoint.

Advice to Senior Management

Continue to work on improving top down communication. Integration of product sets and creating solutions which benefit millenials and tech-savvy learners is critical.

Pros

The company has a good leadership team. Work Culture is very good.

Cons

Employee Benefits can be better.

Advice to Senior Management

Improve Benefits.

Pros

Great talented people to work with and satisfying work. Clients are mostly cool and because it is a college enviroment, it is a pretty relaxed atmosphere. The pay is fair.

Cons

You will have no home life! It is all about the work and the more you do, the more they demand. There is constant pressure to increase revenue and vacation is seen as optional.

Advice to Senior Management

Help employees balance work and home life. Allow people time off and don't force them to work on their vacations. Balance the work load. Burnout is definitely an issue and we are losing good people.

Pros

Direct supervisor shares negative and positive feedback and is more than willining to help in anyway possible. The people whom I work with are great which makes working with them easier.

Cons

Competative pay is non-existant and communication about future goals is very limited;

Pros

Flexible work/life balance
A way to positively impact education, students
Lots of changes happening all the time
Lots of satisfied customers
They leave the divisions (platforms) essentially alone, to do their own thing.

Cons

Completely dysfunctional
No synergy between different divisions
Arrogance of the company, think they are indestructible, while the company is being chipped away by competition
No strategy, no vision
"East Coast" mentality
Very clique oriented, if you're not "from" the organization you're treated like a redheaded stepchild.
Difficult to be a new employee. Completely disorganized.
If you're not in HQ (Washington DC), forget about communications or having visibility into anything
Everything is ass-backwards, things don't make sense, issues that many other companies resolved 10 to 15 years ago exist here
Lots of power struggle between corporate and the divisions
Assimilation of acquired companies is abysmal, they keep the old company's management, continuing the old company practices and antics (that often got them into trouble, hence be acquired).
Company doesn't embrace technology, change, best practices, making things better or easier
Prevalent "not invented here" mentality
If you're a seasoned professional (more than 5 years experience), you'll find that many many people in HQ are very young, inexperienced and have an enormous chip on their shoulder.
Inexperience of people in HQ is stunning.

Advice to Senior Management

After you acquire companies, get rid of their management or bring someone in above them.