Blinkx Reviews

Pros

There is a fair amount of flexibility with working hours and I've had a good balance with my work/personal life. I've received promotions and have learned a lot.

Cons

Information is not provided very openly. Senior management is not supportive of employees sharing ideas or making suggestions about the progress of the company.

Advice to Senior Management

Fear based management doesn't produce results and it doesn't make your employees respect you. Don't expect people to have trust in you when you make decisions that don't seem to be well thought out.

Pros

Free lunches
Coworkers are generally cool unless they're at mid-management or higher
A fully stocked fridge and kitchen
Pay is decent

Cons

Everything else. If you like working in a boring, stuffy work environment with management breathing down your neck at every step, this might be the place for you.

Advice to Senior Management

Listen to your employees. Realize that you don't actually know everything. Show your employees some respect and reward ingenuity and hard work instead of trying to bend them to your will.

Pros

-Office location
-Interesting (yet not proprietary) technology
-base salary was decent

Cons

-inept executive team
-terrible communication and collaboration
-poorly treated developers
-"falsifying" of numbers (video views, page views, etc)
-horrible sales strategy (wait, there was not strategy)
-manipulative management team
-people always pointing blame, not interested in working together
-all technology is licensed from Autonomy, so no real value

Advice to Senior Management

1. get a clue
2. treat your employees with respect
3. time to come up with a true strategy for selling
4. you let RAMP (formerly Everyzing) take your lunch money and laugh at you
5. resign

Pros

My peers were top quality. Everyone was competent and good at their jobs. They all left and got better jobs elsewhere.

Cons

Terrible management. They yell and cuss at others in the office. They have no direction other than to do what they can to make good press releases.

Advice to Senior Management

Management needs to relax and let people do their jobs properly. Try to actually develop a real product rather than "do deals" that sound good in press releases.

Pros

The senior managers have really cool accents. It’s like working for a mean little Hugh Grant. If you like senior managers who are bad at managing but have really cool accents, then you’ll love it here.

Most middle managers and peers are good people. Their morale is low, but they’re good people.

Cons

The work environment is the worst. Senior management sees themselves as brilliant wiz-kids and all employees as vermin. Employees are disrespected and constantly reminded of their expendability. Folks are scared of the penalties of a bad decision so they don’t make decisions on their own. Their fear keeps them from investing any time in helping out fellow peers, it’s all about protecting yourself.

It’s just no fun to be treated so poorly and seeing people you respect being treated even worse. There’s an uncomfortable, depressing feeling everywhere, in meetings, in conversations, in work habits that all stem from the awful senior management.

Advice to Senior Management

It’s probably too late. No one from senior management understands good leadership. B-slap the top five and replace with smart, respectful, experienced leaders and maybe there’s hope.

Pros

Conceptually a great service, unfortunately not so great in reality.
Some (but not all) wonderful co-workers, who give, and give, and give.
Generally fair pay.

Cons

Paranoid, egotistical management, with poor people skills.
Disorganized, lots of balls being dropped, in generally all departments.
Low morale, many employees who would normally leave this company feel stuck because of the poor economy.

Advice to Senior Management

Needs an overhaul top down, especially at the top, but may be too late for that - doubtful if Blinkx could attract the right kind of management talent now.

Pros

Working for this business could help you learn how not to run a business...

Cons

This business really is going nowhere. Not only is it run by a group of highly unpleasant individuals, it also has no clear strategy and completely falsifies its product, users and technical capabilities.
Any positive postings on the share site and here are written by the PR or management team at blinkx.

Advice to Senior Management

Listen to your staff. Go and do some management training. Stop feeling you need to be so nasty to get more from your employees.

Pros

cool idea, online video search

Cons

No regard for employees as human beings. No communication from senior management of corporate strategies - even though there weren't any real missions or strategies or goals they didn't even convey whatever foolish plans they were conceiving. Didn't trust employees, listen to them, or properly utilize their skills. Just head down into their own ultimate destruction. Very odd work environment, no one really seemed to like each other. The MO seemed to be share nothing and if you're forced to, share less than will help your colleague. The attitude trickles down from senior management. Whatever was happening in reality didn't seem to ever line up with whatever they're reporting to the world. Nothing worked as it was supposed to and results appear to be very inflated.

Advice to Senior Management

Can't really help. You don't know what you don't know. I just don't understand how people like that get to those positions. It's one of those situations where failure is the norm and no one keeps track of anyone else.

Pros

I found the company a challenging and fast paced environment to work in. With new projects constantly coming up and very much at the leading edge of what technology can offer in this space.

Cons

Being a fast paced industry means that on the down side the place can be a little caotic or manic, some days crazy. You also have to scream to be heard and sometimes your voice drowns.

Advice to Senior Management

Listen to the troops and be less quick in dismissing their thoughts. some great material comes from us and can make the company more successful. Also communicate more.

Pros

an interesting techonology that has a lot of promise
opportunity to get in early in the online video search space

Cons

paranoid executives micromanage ineffectively
no recognition of talent
childish vindictive and manipulative actions
lacking self-confidence, management projects their own shortcomings onto their employees

Advice to Senior Management

respect and reward your talent or they will walk away
have a business strategy and plan accordingly
establish core values and communicate them
communicate with your employees
don't think that you are above QA, documentation, and thoughtful planning
treat employees fairly
instead of blaming your employees, take a self-inventory