Blue Coat Systems Reviews

Pros

Stable and profitable.
Provides good working environment.
Reasonable benefits.
If your life is about enterprise type of products, network security and bandwidth optimization - this is for you then!

Cons

Management shuffles business units and employees between them. If you work for years on the product, know your code upside down, invested personal energy and passion into it - prepare to loose all of it as company will take it away from you in a year or two. Just to kick you out of your comfort zone. Due to a business need, of course. You don't like it - you free to go.
Strong executive authoritative vertical.
Target customers are not a consumer market: you have to love enterprises and corporate America.
Politics: you can't move your finger without it. You have to know rules of game.

Advice to Senior Management

There is no trust in management: any talk shall be filtered. Treating engineers as their opinion is nothing does not add value in development and production.

Pros

Fair pay, free snacks, some smart people who try hard

Cons

Leaders manage by fear, are disrespectful and if you voice an opposing opinion you will be fired. If you keep your head down, stroke the ego of the CMO then you may be able to keep your job. There is little to no communication in marketing from the leader and no clear vision of where the marketing organization is going. I joined Blue Coat to make a difference and sadly the only difference I can make is to leave. Blue Coat was once a good company but based on the recent marketing leadership hire it is clear the executives do not understand the value marketing could provide. Stay away!

Advice to Senior Management

Realize and admit the mistake you made by hiring the new CMO and get rid of him before he causes any more damage. Clearly a guy who cares more about his (awful) hair than the company can only cause damage!

Pros

- Fast pace environment
- Nice people
- Helpful too

Cons

- Too much politics and grouping
- Difficult to survive
- Favoritism

Pros

Great Technology and chance to learn new technology. Some fantastic people. Interesting Initiatives and world class clientele. Utilization of Open Source alternatives.

Cons

Absolutely no competent management - no responsibility either. No career building or advancement opportunities. Blame, blame, blame. Horrible communication. Reviews go downward only - no chance to review upwards.

Advice to Senior Management

Road-maps that don't change every week. Figure out who and what you want to be. try communicating from the ground up. 360 Reviews would be a great start!

Pros

the technology we work on and the engineering team competence

Cons

fire drill management all the time

Advice to Senior Management

need new operational exec management

Pros

Causal atmosphere – no dress code,
Flexible working - can work from home, management don’t seem to care if your in or not as long as the work gets done,

Cons

Atmosphere - people are only too willing to stab you in the back, especially managers to get what they want.
Trying to implement policies for a large company, when they are still a small company, which leads to some really bizarre decisions.
Far too political.
Lack of communication, you generally find out via the grapevine what is going on, before you are officially told, or in some instances not told at all and left working it out for yourself.
No one wants to make a decision, it gets passed round like a hot potato
Endless meetings to discuss meetings!

Advice to Senior Management

To actually listen to the employee's and take some of their advice,
Also stop having two tiers in the company, whilst Sales are important and should be rewarded for winning new customers and retaining existing customers, also start to recognise and reward the hard work put in by other departments which help sales achieve this.

Pros

The SE team is, bar none, some of the best in the business...their communication, expertise and experience is very senior in many areas.

Cons

The culture has been crushed by changes in the organization, and the company seems to have lost site of its most important asset...the SE. Moral is low, as is the ability to overachieve...this is a huge dissuading factor for A players.

Advice to Senior Management

Go back to what worked at BCSI for years...focus on what you're best at...stop worrying about building a massive mgmt team and becoming something bigger than you are right now, and worry about retaining/getting back some of the market share lost in a sector that BCSI used to OWN. INNOVATE.

Pros

People I am working with are nice.

Cons

A huge management team is leading a few engineers who need to do lots projects.

Advice to Senior Management

There are way more VPs, Dirctors than it should.

Pros

Company is part of an exciting market space

Cons

IT Security budgetary constraints impose challenges for growth

Advice to Senior Management

Consider more communication and empower management

Pros

The markets that Blue Coat plays in are very relevant. There are huge opportunities for Blue Coat to do well with their technology.

Cons

Trying to act like a very large company with being overly process-laden. There is time and place for rigid process but not when you are trying to attack new markets where innovation is required and you are not quite sure what to do. Not allowing much autonomy at any level of management below the executive staff - the smallest things require a full powerpoint presentation in order to be considered.

Advice to Senior Management

None.