Blue Coat Systems Reviews

Pros

Products are very competitive and well designed. Some engineers, have a very good knowledge in the products and are keen on showing how it works. Workplace is near home which makes life easier.

Cons

Very poor local and overall management. A lot of office politics and people who are ready to step over colleagues to get "promoted" to a not existing place. A lot of promises and nothing is made or done. Local management take decisions similar to a kindergarden teacher. Very low social benefits program, salary wedges are below what they should be. Most of time, employee needs to cover his back by requesting approvals for everything. Very heavy and politcal hierachy. Management establish rules that they're not applying or following.

Advice to Senior Management

Management should consider a change on the hierachy and competences of local office managers. If they want to recognized as a worldwide company, they should have all the Infrastucture that goes with it. At present moment, this is not clear and most of the employees don't have a sligthy idea where the company is going.

Pros

technology is cutting edge, deal with all aspects of Internet traffic and apps, customers from all industries and levels, very interesting

Cons

very high volume of work, you can spend 12+ hour days and still isn't enough

Advice to Senior Management

hire more people to offer a better working environment

Pros

good compensation and benefits, good work life balance
core product is best in class and well received by the market

Cons

Senior management gives no clear direction. Is Blue Coat a security company, Wan Optimization company? It changes from week to week it seems. Blue Coat lost direction and focus on its core product while developing Wan Optimization. As a result of this, market share is starting to decline, and are now way behind on innovation which is needed to stay ahead.

Very cut throat environment at Senior level. Everyone tries to keep their head down, as their apparent reasons for letting people go, and the decisions they use to do so are completely irrational. Meanwhile, they keep on the "Yes" men and under performers who are dragging the company down.

In place of innovation, they did lay offs, and more processes every week which is keeping employees from maximizing revenue and selling potential.

Advice to Senior Management

Get out of the way and let someone else from the outside with a fresh perspective come in and get things going again. Innovate or die, it is the nature of the market.

Pros

Easy to know what people work on. Good technical exposure.

Cons

They pay less than the market. They cannot handle their size after the acquisitions - so very unorganized. Management is in their own world and they are disrespectful towards the engineers who are just treated as commodity. The place is quiet political and a lot of energy is wasted in that.

Advice to Senior Management

Management is hopeless and they know it !

Pros

Company still feels like a startup, there is still the resemblance of a family atmosphere, but recent managerial appointments and an obsessive desire to be one of the big guys leave a very sour taste.

Cons

In some sections of the organisation, managers are caught in a loop, suggesting massive changes in order to 'make a mark', implementing those changes at great expensive and upheaval and ultimately innevitable failure and quiet exit, only for the next guy to have a go.

Advice to Senior Management

When the entire senior management team of company A takes up positions at company B, the culture and atmosphere of company B is going to disentigrate

Pros

You can work from home anytime you want. They really don't care if you are there in person or not.

Cons

This place is aweful. Avoid working there if you can. They manage by fear, have a culture of distrust, the leadership is highly incompetent, and there is no clear direction/vision for where they want to be 3-5 years from now. Most people don't last in this company.

Advice to Senior Management

Leave....you don't have what it takes to grow the company further and certainly lack the leadership necessary to make it to $1B.

Pros

Good technology and vision. Excellent access to execs. On the other hand, this means lots of exposure, too. You get to work with some Incredibly bright people, and you'll learn a lot about all aspects of the business.

Cons

Overweight with senior management, perhaps "too many cooks" is an apt statement here. They're constantly meddling in product planning and decisions that would be best left to the people they hired to actually manage the products. Incredibly political organization. Poor morale, with employees living in fear. Lack of innovation. So process-laden that even the smallest decisions require a PowerPoint presentation and approval from execs. Rife with long, unproductive meetings with no real agenda, where everyone is on laptops and no real decisions get made. Not a very fun place to work. Little opportunity for advancement or career growth here. Great values, no culture.

Advice to Senior Management

Refocus the company, with a coherent, clear and compelling plan to capitalize on the lead you've got in the Security space. On the other hand, get out of markets that make no sense for you, like WAN Optimization. This is completely dominated by Riverbed, with Cisco behind them in the relatively distant 2nd place spot. Why bother fighting battles you can't win, especially when the war is already over?

Encourage innovation, creativity and risk-taking. Give people a chance to succeed, and let them learn from their successes. Give people a chance to fail, and let them learn from their mistakes. Reward people for their work, and recognize their achievements. Stop driving away your best talent. Model and exemplify the values if you expect your employees to do the same. Walk the talk.

It's high time to bring in some new blood, especially at the executive level. Learn to keep the good ones. Fire the bad ones.

Pros

It's a well-known company inside of its industry and customers like the products.

Cons

A lot of politics at Blue Coat. It seemed that someone was always scheming / manipulating to try to get ahead, making others look bad and too more energy is spent on playing politics than improving the products and services to customers. They often do random RIFs - and my guess is just so that it keeps the stock price from dropping.

Advice to Senior Management

Promote people based on merit, rather than how much they kiss ass.

Pros

Great health benefits, employee stock option and purchase plan, profit sharing. Headquarters location is newer, has good gym with solid equiptment and access to training advisor, bagels and organic fruit for employees.
Employees are smart, eager, dedicated. Product line is competitive and probably gives some Cisco, Riverbed folks headaches.

Cons

Starting to lose the attractive benefits of a smaller company and picking up bad habits of larger sized organizations, i.e. politics, kingdom-itis, product waivering.

Advice to Senior Management

Pay attention to what you're hearing up the ranks. It isn't all chatter, but legitiimate concerns and frustration that if left unresolved will fester = Productivity drops, and lose good people.

Pros

Good pay and benefits package, decent casual work environment and a lot of smart people. My managers were flexible with time off which allowed me to have a decent work/life balance.

Cons

The direction of the company keeps shifting, it seemed like every quarterly meeting had some change in direction announcement. With constantly shifting goalposts, we were always playing catch up, after a while this really gets old. Shifting work to India seems like a short sighted tactic, not sure if that will work out.

Advice to Senior Management

Find a direction and stick with it.