Cadence Design Reviews

Pros

Flexible in allowing employees to be empowered to make decisions to improve the company and how they interact with customers.

Cons

Stressful in not managing the business in a consistent manner which gives employees a feeling of not being in control of their destiny.

Advice to Senior Management

Be ethical in all business transactions, reduce discounting of products, remember the value add of your products and how your customers rely heavily on you.

Pros

Great people to work with. Loads of experience. Nice opportunities

Cons

Not as aggressive as its competitors

Advice to Senior Management

Believe in your people and products and people

Pros

Commuting is convenient to me.

Cons

The top-level management sometimes make nonsense decision.

Advice to Senior Management

To improve understanding of the company.

Pros

Learning opportunities are very good

Cons

Promotion to slow at times

Advice to Senior Management

Become technically more savvy

Pros

Used to be number one EDA company

Cons

Losing the edge to other EDA companies

Advice to Senior Management

Need to streamline

Pros

My experience was that mid-level management facilitated work, recognized talents, made internal resources (people, access, systems) available, recognized contributions, and was very understanding and flexible with work/life situations. On-site cafeteria is good, and the gym access was also a very nice plus. Scale of IT systems operations (nodes, geographic distribution, size of individual systems, complexity of the farm as a whole) is pretty cool from a challenge perspective.

Cons

I left during a general RIF which also saw termination of most of the executive suite. At upper levels of management, corporate direction was wanting and the company's position relative to competitors was slightly unfavorable on the market. There's a solid base of customers, but growth is limited (there's also a limited amount of growth within the EDA market as a whole). There's also a 20+ year tech legacy, which makes systems somewhat less than cutting edge, and the company lags in adopting new (especially Open Source) technology. At the time the company shed much long-lived talent as well, to its detriment.

Advice to Senior Management

Figure out what your overall growth prospects are and plan accordingly. You're a mature company in a limited market. Continue to recognize and grow talent. Look to technology upgrades and updates, within the constraints of ensuring stability of existing systems.

Pros

Tremendously intelligent employees and customers. Decent pay.

Cons

Environment has become extremely political. Management asks employees to sacrifice but they do not themselves.

Advice to Senior Management

Show that you value the contributions of your employees, it's not all about you.

Pros

- One of descent leader in industrial SW at Moscow
- Very good place to start career
- Pretty nice place for geeks

Cons

- Bad social network relations inside company at all and Moscow office
- HR services at Moscow are something strange
- Mass fire of 20% personal in 1 day: thanks, guys...

Advice to Senior Management

2008 management team was something strange both at Moscow and at SC. Jim Miller and Mike Fister, what about my stocks? Moscow guys ( A.K & Y.Y), do you have balls?

Pros

Good company with good technology. Interesting work.

Cons

Not a lot of room for advancement like many big companies.
Political at times.

Advice to Senior Management

Allow for job rotation

Pros

All in all, for this industry the compensation offered can be considered fair when compared to many other product market/management positions in other industries. Because the competition between the big three, the salaries are inflated but well worth it due to the demands of the job.

Cons

- Because to the state of constant change, there seems to be no time to do a good job on anything.
- Executive Management Team (EMT) just doesn't have a clue as their expertise and attentions seems to be elsewhere. As result of this, too many opportunities to execute correctly are missed.
- I don't know how better to explain this other that to say "Empire Building" is a full-time pre-occupation for some within R&D.
- A huge investment is made in developing plans to operationalize against objectives, but then it all fizzles out when it runs a-foul of middle managers.
- Now the interest seems to be in creating the buzz to a broader marketplace rather than focusing in on the market that actually uses the technology. Blogging and "Tweating" does not connect with this marketplace for this technology.

Advice to Senior Management

How about investing in the people who know this marketplace, its users, its needs, and what the technology needs rather than trying to market to the competitors marketing and publicity organizations.