CA Technologies Reviews

Pros

No Pros.

These are the reason why you should work for CA Engineering:

You get to work for a rare great manager.
You get paid exceptionally well, again rare in Engineering.
You are married and live within 5-10 miles from office.
When the country is facing a recession and no other better software firm is hiring.

Cons

Faulty promotion and rewards structure.
Mismanaged software projects.
No organically built product, all acquired.
Lot of stories from management, no actions.

Advice to Senior Management

Try paying more for better talent and you will see things change.

Pros

At CA you can control your own destiny. Opportunities to grow and develop are endless in this fast paced, ever changing company. A great company for self-motivated people to grow.

Cons

Senior management does not always work together as a team for the overall good of the company. The company could benefit from some changes at the top.

Advice to Senior Management

Stop playing the blame game.

Pros

The field people are very helpful and are concerned for the client

Cons

Lack of raises for the past 7 years
Lack of advanced opportunties
Software is flawed and usually fails

Advice to Senior Management

Don't make claims you cannot deliver.

Pros

Good benefits, nice pay comparatively and good w-f balance
nice peer group
great field folks to help with
nice cross functional teams

Cons

internal politics could be bettered
employees can be made aware of high level management decisions better
lack of clarity in promotions

Advice to Senior Management

Make sure to focus on "EMPLOYEES" and not just managers alwasys..

Pros

Good benefits. Work from home option for some roles.

Cons

Accountability is an issue and the blame game is part of the culture.

Advice to Senior Management

Enforce process and better define roles and responsibilities.

Pros

Continuous compensation benefits at a bad economic time

Cons

Lack of morale, inferior management team

Advice to Senior Management

Stop stifling the culture by recycling the same ineffective managers or bringing in executives who don't have a clue as to how to build up the company.

Pros

1) The physical location of the office is nice if you can take a bus.
2) I like the CEO.

Cons

1) Company lacks focus, and investment in its experienced resource pool
2) Be careful of which development office you sign up for as many are not developing anything that is currently on the critical path for CA, so an R&D job or PM job might be stuck supporting legacy software that has been in trouble due to "off shoring development, qa, and support to India".
3) Innovation is praised, but rarely invested in or executed on.
4) Cloud computing rules the roost, but CA's current cloud solutions are not really players in the market, thus CA has been on a fast track of irrelevance in the industry for about a year now with nothing really coming in to focus as a market changer for them.
5) Forget about raises, get your money up front. Not to mention the 500 layoffs that CA posts about every 6 months.

Advice to Senior Management

Listen to the lowest ranks (Pr. Sr. Dev, Arch, Sales), and the experienced (5-10yrs, - you know the folks that have stuck by the company loyally through its worst years) ranks, specifically in R&D. Don't take their suggestions as destructive criticism, but perhaps understand that if there is a mistake that Sr. Management has made in the past, these roles have likely lived through it, and learned from it and would be happy to share those experiences and solutions - specifically if it meant they wouldn't have to live through the mistake yet again.

Pros

-second to none comp plan for sales reps
-success is celebrated

Cons

-sweatshop mentality has returned in sales leadership
-we don't have a cohesive company strategy
-lots of good folks are leaving

Advice to Senior Management

Serious consider a shake-up of sales mgmt. I've never seen morale so low inside a sales organization.

Pros

Many great individual employees to work with.
Ability to work on a lot of sophisticated technology.
Large company with many resources.

Cons

Salary, raises, and bonuses below average - especially in development.
Frequent mass layoffs - once or twice a year - for the last several years.
Frequent internal organizational changes.
Depending on where you end up, a lot of internal politics and dissatisfied employees.
Lots of development moving offshore to India, Eastern Europe, and other (great if you live there).
Company can't decide whether it's a growth or value company.
Stock price has been stuck for several years.

Pros

1) Flexibility of benefits choices.
2) Competitive compensation.
3) On site gym.

Cons

1) Arbitrary decision making by management.
2) Job insecurity.
3) A lack of a cohesive message.

Advice to Senior Management

Have a more uniform methodology for applying company policy without so much mid-management discretion. It dilutes the message Senior Management is trying too convey and fosters mistrust. As an example , the CEO announced a layoff of five hundred people to come from unprofitable areas of the company. When the layoff occurred, some of the most profitable groups within CA lost head count. Can anyone really trust a management staff that appears to lie outright? Get rid of management bloat. Are dozens of VPs and Senior VPs really needed?