Brainware Reviews

Pros

Technology products are industry best.
People are smart.
Training is ongoing and useful.
Customers are world's biggest companies.
Management is fully committed.
Company is growing.
Financially strong and secure.

Cons

Company's name recognition is not equal to its technology, but marketing is making progress.
Company should hire more people sooner.

Advice to Senior Management

My advice to management is to hire more people, encourage negative people to leave and consider hiring a few more senior people to help the younger people.

Pros

BW is an awesome place to work and grow professionally if your are willing to work hard and make a contribution everyday. If you want to complain, sit back and watch others work or take pop shots at every decision made, this is not the place for you. Serious employees intent on seeing the company succeed are compensated very well.

Cons

Those that are lazy, complain, sit back and watch others work and take pop shots at every decision made are given too much latitude and should be fired!

Advice to Senior Management

Keep growing the company every year, investing in the company ever year and weeding out the deadbeats every year.

Pros

Outstanding company, product and employees. Recent teminations of poor performers refreshing. Obviously those fired are complaining about company because they are unhappy about being fired. Management very engaged and working alongside all employees to succeed. Best place I ever worked.

Cons

Some non performers, now gone were allowed to stay too long.

Advice to Senior Management

Get rid of deadbeats sooner, and they can spend their time writing complaints here.

Pros

There is no disagreement within any of these reviews that BW has great technology and a strong prospect base - just a shame they can't do anything with it. They offer young blood a way into the working world (good luck lazy and spoiled generation) but seasoned veterens need not apply, or enter at your own risk.

Cons

Very paranoid and protective executive staff - Last time I checked non-performing employees were a reflection of poor management or a result of "noone good left to hire " because you have cycled through them all since 2006.

Advice to Senior Management

Keep creating positve comments here to offset the negativity piling up from your annual "cut list". Either have your executives or kool-aid drinkers say how proud they are to work at Brainware - only to return here months later with a negative comment after they too have been released.

Pros

Best product on the market in it's field.

Cons

Management shows a general lack of interest in employee perceptions and general office moral is at an all time low (internationally as well as domestically). Employees are not recognized for their contributions and work. Only a handful of employees are content with their job security. Employees are mostly paid below market value and rarley see increases during their tenure. The lack of communication of everything from the top down and between departments ensures that any ideas for improvements will never be accomplished. For such a small company, the politics rival the US Congress!

Advice to Senior Management

If you want to continue to grow this company, you need some stability in the workforce. Pay attention to your greatest asset outside of the technology and treat your workforce with respect. If you truly believe you are hiring the best and the brightest, you have a funny way of showing them that once they are on board. It's sad to have prior employees refer to the best thing about working at Brainware, was when they fired me. It is possible to continue management's current focus while improving the work environment, but it will take some effort by executive management.

Pros

The core technology may have good potential if properly developed and Brainware has attracted a fairly recognizable list of customers.

Cons

Turnover rate for sales reps and sales associates exceeds 100% per year. Sales leadership and management style is better suited for inside sales commodity type business like cell phones or car insurance. The three principals (CEO, President, and COO) are all attorneys and have little to no enterprise software sales or business sense.

Advice to Senior Management

Hire sales leadership with proven industry experience and track record. Hire executive management with skills in leading small start up software companies.

Pros

There are a number of great people at Brainware and the software really helps customers achieve significant benefits for their operations.

Cons

Working at Brainware is just a job, not a career. This is fine for some people, but for those with motivation they will quickly learn that upper management either doesn't understand that people want growth or they just don't care. Most people are overlooked for promotions as new positions almost always go to new outside people. Related to that is the policy of only giving raises to 1/3 of the employees every year. Supposedly it is the top performers, but since there is no defined criteria, it is subjective at best. You will likely never see a pay raise at all during your time at Brainware. Lastly, new titles/promotions are given only to the close circle of people around the CEO. New titles are so freely thrown around with this small group, that frequently they don't even bother to have internal announcements. Altogether, it is not ucommon to see people standing around in the hallways talking on their cell phones to other companies as they look for new jobs.

As a side note, you will be expected to pay for all of your work travel out of your own money. They are pretty good at turning around reimbursements, but you should know that you will likely have at least a couple of thousand dollars of money you need to shell out during any given month.

Advice to Senior Management

At a bare minimum, get at least one person on the executive team that has been to business school. It is very frustrating to see classic management mistakes made over and over again, and allowing issues to fester until a customer complains is just plain embarrasing. You also need to quit comparing how you run the business to how you sell cars. Especially in sales, you need to pick another model/analogy. There are some good car businesses out there, but in general no one wants to purposely consider their software business to be the same as selling cars (e.g., deal desk).

Pros

The software shows a lot of promise due to the engineers' work in Germany. Headquarters as well as operations are based in the US, however I can only think that those in non-management positions are nice as well as sincere to interact with. On the other hand, because of this, you are able to empathize with colleagues about Brainware's poor work culture and incompetence of management.

Cons

Employees are underpaid - well below market level - and scared about losing their job. Turnover is unusually high, unless of course you are part of management team. Performance reviews or feedback from management do not exist. CEO was angry when an employee quit; management would rather fire than let you resign. Unhealthy and toxic work culture where hard work ethic is not valued. Politics is also huge in the office.

Advice to Senior Management

Learn to treat your employees well and with dignity. Everyone here feels like a slave and it is by no means a joke.

Pros

The people are great at Brainware to work with. The products are great and the employees are proud of what their product offerings.

Cons

The culture can be workholic - a topic executive recently died of a stroke. The morale is not something to brag about - people working there are apprehensive about their job security. The company had a massive layoff last year with no prior notice/announcement to any employee. It is disheartening to see how the hard work you put on the job was not only recognized but overlooked so the company can make its revenue goals. The "restructuring" broungt about a 300% increase in revenue for the company.

Advice to Senior Management

In your drive to post impressive numbers for the investors, consider how the morale impact on your workforce.

Pros

Brainware sells a truely excellent product and by working there you have the opportunity to interact with some of the largest companies in the world

Cons

There is very little abbility to progress beyond the job that you are hired into. Salaries are below market level.

Advice to Senior Management

A companys long term success is based upon the foundation of the people that work for the company - this should be a focus area of management