Bose Reviews

Pros

A few good products. Bonuses even though the company wasnt making any money. Good work life balance. Really nice corporate offices

Cons

Nepotisim runs wild. Middle management is ineffective and many have been there for a long time. Home entertainment products are overpriced and dont meet market needs.

Advice to Senior Management

Clean house. Identify the middle management folks who have been there 20+yrs and are the cause of the issues and not solution. Your layoff of 1000 people last yr didnt tartget the right people.

Pros

Nice facilities, employee discounts, competent colleagues, high hiring standards.

Cons

With a few exceptions, Corporate HR was the biggest collection of purely politically motivated people I had ever worked with. HR morale was very low. Pretty ironic!
Leadership was poor. Compared to other departments, HR was the armpit of the whole corporation.

Advice to Senior Management

Clean house in HR. There's a strong need for fresh blood!

Pros

Great teamwork and respect from other employees. The products are exciting and there is a good level of flexibility in hours to manage a balanced personal life.

Cons

The company is slow to react to markets. It's not as innovative as it thinks it is. The opportunities for career advancement are dependent on who the management is rather than being consistent throughout the company.

Advice to Senior Management

Give the employees a better chance to innovate. Drive high potential employees to move ahead and succeed rather than stagnating in their positions. Fix the office environment for engineering, it's embarrassing to have such dilapidated offices for such talented and hardworking people.

Pros

Interesting innovations make Bose a fascinating place to be able to visit and work. There are more engineers than any other division and they have some incredible talent.

Cons

The "Bose Culture" is where the innovation ends. Great ideas are shot down constantly and, if you submit too many new concepts, you can find yourself being questioned about your understanding of the Bose Culture. This means that opportunities being opened to you are shut down. Just an unimpressive management team who spent so much time glad handing themselves that they forgot how to make business happen.

Advice to Senior Management

For such an innovative company, don't let the innovation end in the engineering department

Pros

Good pay and benefits. They try to keep employees motivated. Get to working on interesting projects. Good support from management.

Cons

Lots of strange rules. Strict parking rules. No food or drink at desks. Are not supposed to say certain words. Lots of backstabbing.

Advice to Senior Management

Change some of the strange rules at the company.

Pros

- Great benefits and bonuses
- This is fun sales, other than selling clothes in most retail industries
- Quality stereo equipment; not too hard to sell

Cons

- Terrible upper management, especially at this store
- Hard to get time off - do not see that you balance personal life and work life
- Long days when you are in school as well

Advice to Senior Management

- Give more incentives for a job well done
- Do not worry so much about the little things and focus on the big picture

Pros

Great group of peers at the engineer level. Product discounts. Company is pretty stable. Good beneifts. Decent starting salaries, just don't stay too long or you'll fall behind the rest of the world. This was a great environment 5 years ago.

Cons

IT workers viewed as commodities and not valued by IT management and their superiors, all the way to the top. Input is largely disregarded by management. Lots of politics. Very secretive. Ask folks who are in the trenches; they're not happy. The IT organization has really gone down hill in the last 5 years

Advice to Senior Management

They should look at their IT organization and employees. They've been repeatedly made aware of the issues...all the way to the top....and choose to turn a blind eye. At least in IT, Bose is more about money than employee development and respect.

Pros

The people I work with are great, the products are generally well perceived, and generally people are well treated. Bose, being a privately held company, has been fairly stable.

Cons

The upper management at Bose makes a real effort to walk the talk of respect and fairness. Unfortunately, not all middle management takes that to heart. There is more political intrigue then the should be, or needs to be.

There is a management practice duJour mentality that permeates this company. If six sigma is good, seven should be better. I don't know, maybe that's in every company.

Advice to Senior Management

Weed out bad managers, and get down to the business of making products. Make a concerted effort to continue producing products in the USA. Many of us are proud of that and like working here because of that.

Pros

The people were nice, and the team atmosphere was nice. The communication between departments seemed fluid. The pay was much more than I expected.

Cons

Everyone keeps to themselves a bit. Of course, I think it's due to the Bose QC3 headsets being so good.

Advice to Senior Management

Take some chances and spend a penny or two more on your products. Just because something costs a penny more may help it overcome your competition's products.

Pros

Some VERY smart people but NOT all. Looks good on your resume and summer sale gives great discount to employees. If you are a real Engineer at heart and a local white boy its perfect for you - there are generation of people working here, dad, son, daughter all employeed at Bose.

Cons

IF you are not a citizen OR don't have a green card ... THIS COMPANY IS NOT FOR YOU. HR will give you tough time and is quite dominant in Bose (your manager doesn't have much say). Plus if you are not white chances are you won't go UP much esp NOT in upper management. Minority turnover is HUGE!!!

Advice to Senior Management

You rHR needs some sane people who have a better outlook at life and people.