Borland Software Reviews

Pros

The management is quite good. And the working style is also good. The people are quite kind. And you have a lot of time to learn.

Cons

The only bad thing is it doesn't earn money. so there is no salary increase. And this is no motivation.

Advice to Senior Management

Please make the correctly decision and let Borland earn money. If possible, please provide some beget to engineer to increase salary.

Pros

If you are willing to take chances, you can be given more and more responsibility. There is a certain amount of desperation and it is difficult for them to bring in new people from the outside, so new opportunities are often given to internal people. The engineering teams do some excellent work.

Cons

There is an air of defeat and uncertainty about the company at this time. There is fear that is preventing people from moving forward with some decisions and instead they're hesitant. The multiple rounds of layoffs and continually dropping stock price have everyone in shock and, to a great extent, immobilized.

Advice to Senior Management

To get things moving! Reward people in tangible ways for taking steps to get things unstuck.

Pros

this is an exciting time to be at the company, as there are huge changes going on. If the company can get the market to pay attention in this economy, the new product suite (borland management services, team focus and team analytics and team demand) may bring the company to new heights. there is a strong history in the company, and it has been able to re invent itself numerous times in the past. The bottom line is that there may be a huge upside for employees who were granted stock options, as the stock can't get much lower without being delisted from NASDAQ.

Cons

there are a number of changes in the company going on. The company is losing money left and right, and can not even keep revenue numbers where the were, it is a slippery downward slope, and the company is bleeding red. The company does not have a real focus, and or that focus is constantly changing, and therefore there are real concerns about longer term viability. The company sold off their former bread and butter division for next to nothing, and is no longer focusing on it's next level of products. In short, there is great uncertainty in the organization as a whole.

Advice to Senior Management

STOP the bleeding. Focus on integrating your existing products before chasing the next "big thing". Build your customer base and create a sense of loyalty and quality.

Pros

Good technology, good people, supportive environment. Great brand name that is recognized around the world. Opportunities for advancement in various areas (product management, customer services, R&D, sales, marketing). Product is needed by virtually every company in the world (i.e. any company that writes software of any kind). Great place to work if you truly love software, and care about best practices in software development. You can truly make a difference to the world.

Cons

Mission drifts every few months, very competitive market, stock has taken a beating. Lots of office closures, drawdowns, and uncertainty. Lots of reorganizations lead to a sense of instability.

Advice to Senior Management

Focus on doing one thing and doing it well; move to a software-as-a-service delivery model; take care of your people and prioritize them over your customers

Pros

Great boss who listens to my input and challenges me. Always keeps me busy and doing different things. Direct manager pushes me to be my best. Benefits are great, and management is awesome. It's a great environment, and management recognizes those who perform well. Excellent, open communication with direct manager, and pretty good communication with manager above them. Everyone is very friendly. I immediately felt welcome upon starting work at Borland

Cons

Too much work for the number of people sometimes. Everyone is a chronic workaholic. Very high expectations to live up to. Not really a bad thing, but can cause more stress since near-perfection is expected. Worry about the financial health of the company

Advice to Senior Management

Be profitable.

Pros

Mostly good people to work with at rank and file level

Cons

Poor financial performance of the company, resistence to change sales models that are not working, resistence to remove or change jobs for non performers, poor compensation plans, poor investment in product development, constant change of focus.

Advice to Senior Management

Change sales models that don't work, incent or remove non performers, invest in development of products instead of changing focus and messaging, marketing to get brand recognition.

Pros

Borland is a well known company for innovation. It has been serious challenge to Microsoft. Many of its products have been long seen as pioneers of technology such as Turbo Pascal, Delphi, JBuilder, Visibroker, etc. Although some products were not commercially successful, they all are very technically good. In the history, the company has a developer centric culture which makes engineering job attractive. The company used to have a large pool of talents, so experience gained from work is enormous. Also, engineering working environment is good compared to other hitech companies. Compensation is good although the company is not in good condition.

Cons

Current performance of the company is probably the biggest hurdles for anyone attempting to work for Borland. It is on the verge of being delisted from stock market. The stock price keeps going down unstoppably. The product pipeline is almost empty while current product portfolio is so poor. Most of good products were retired. The company is focusing on a super competitive market with big players like IBM, Microsoft. Employees are poorly informed on important decision from senior management. Morale is dropping very fast. Talent pool is drying at an alarming pace. In the end, only few people truly wants to work for the company.

Advice to Senior Management

Please be focused on products that Borland has real potential. ALM market is so competitive while the company has no resource to compete. Retiring good products such as Visibroker can be a huge mistake.

Pros

You like the name because of earlier product of this company

Cons

Your future is unpredictable regardless of your efforts thanks to the way senior management leads the company. During 4 years company is unprofitable. In 2006 Borland changed top management who made mistakes from time to time to another one, which has not done any smart move at all. You can expect another lay off evey half a year as lay offs is the way this company is trying to stay alive. Most of great engineers who worked for this company are either fired or left it. There are still some smart people in Borland, but they are far from management and there are too few of them. And from what we see and hear there is no hope for this company under current management.

Advice to Senior Management

Leave the company for some other victim - this one already had enough of you

Pros

best reason is that the bar was low--did not expect much--though that also meant that they did not give much. and if you performed well, that felt kind of crappy. very little diffrentiation between top and bottom performers.. the company could not die--not a great thing but they did have a way of coming back to life just when you thought they were dead.

Cons

lots wrong. hard to know where to begin. bad strategy--tried to buy their way into a bigger tools market. bad people practices. poor management direction and communication. favoritism was rampant. very raise went to the ceo and not in a good way.

Advice to Senior Management

your people practices are not good--focus on that and company performance will improve--and that will attract better people. a nice not vicous cycle.