Citrix Systems|Citrix Reviews in Miami-Fort Lauderdale, FL Area

Pros

- Exposed to cutting edge technology
- Fast pace environment
- Technology leader in South Florida

Cons

- Citrix needs to make a better job promoting people fairly

Advice to Senior Management

- Performance evaluations should be 360 degrees

Pros

Many very smart people to work with, in general management is good about keeping open communications and promoting employee growth. Company does a good job of promoting fun work environment. Benefit packages and perks are good and well worth it. Get to live and work in south Florida near the beach. Benefits and pay are comparable to California more than Miami/Fort Lauderdale which means you are compensated well but don't expect to find local employment competition if you decide to look elsewhere.

Cons

Biggest show in town so not a lot of alternatives around if you decide you don't like Citrix. My biggest complaint was lack of work life balance. It was not uncommon to need to work weekends or late and often the parking lot was half full with developers cars on weekends. Many of the employees are younger and unmarried and the married ones often don't have children so it is sometimes difficult to get understanding about wanting to be home with your family. One developer I was working with one weekend ended up missing his sons birthday party because they needed him to come in a weekend to make last minute changes. Biggest issue is there is no control of feature creep and during initial product spec'ing, features will be removed for lack of time or man power but the next day they will be added back in as a change request. This is a problem because it means the very feature that we knew there was no time for has to be shoe-horned into the product schedule.

Advice to Senior Management

Product development has a strict spec'ing process with work estimates all along the way. This process is great and needs to be respected, and dropping features form the official release schedule just to re-add them as a change request the next day does nothing more than cause estimates to be overly inflated. For the product features for which I was the team lead we often had to add in extra time buffers for this very reason because we knew it was a given that more stuff would be added in the change request then what a tight time budget could manage. If your going to have formal processes for this sort of thing then respect and use them otherwise you might as well not have them.

Pros

Respectful company, great benefits. Work/Life balance is availble

Cons

Middle management provided limited place for advancement

Advice to Senior Management

Provide better communication chanels

Pros

The CEO is an exeptional person. He cares about profitability but also about doing the right thing for employees as well as stock holders.

Cons

A few other execs are junior or have little experience in their roles. They are smart but do have the skill set needed to lead their organizations.

Advice to Senior Management

Conduct exit interviews if employees leave voluntarily. Managers are desperately in need training. Do nor promote managers if they do not demonstrate leadership ability. Diversity needs to improve. Why are there no female execs? Bring in senior porofessional from larger companies that have experience and new perspective and will challenge the status-quo.

Pros

Great product and technology. As an engineer I get to work on some cool things. Management encourages innovation and is supportive in general. Good work / life balance, flexible schedule and decent benefit. Execs responds to market and make decisions quickly.

Cons

The company has some common problems of a mid-size software company: average compensation, lack of career growth, low morale, communication issues, etc. Politics at mid-management level can be quite bad at some organizations. The flagship product is getting flat and grow opportunities are limited.

Advice to Senior Management

Better communication. More transparency in the promotion / career growth paths. Make it easier for employee to move from team to team / site to site to work on things they are interested in. Management needs to listen to the employees.

Pros

Good company great product. Great executive (c level) staff. CEO is very nice and the rest if the senior executives are cordial.

Cons

Too much middle management. Latin managers want Latin people working for them. The sr. Managers are very political. If you do not come from Cuba, then you will not like it. Many meetings break into Spanish . Plus the managers cannot speak English very well and you may not be able to decipher them.

Advice to Senior Management

Learn English, open mind, quit and move to Latin America

Pros

Many free lunches, great facility, and team building activities, many perks to working with the company. Many performance reviews and recognition opportunities.

Cons

Very little room for growth, I personally felt overworked and like tasks were thrown at me constantly with little direction or instruction. Yet I was held completely responsible when things were not done correctly.

Advice to Senior Management

Make sure those you are promoting into management roles are actually qualified to manage others. It takes more to be a manager than simply 'getting the job done." My former manager had a terrible personality and did not know how to deal with others. Yet she kept her job bc she was able to delegate and execute.

Pros

- Competitive salary and benefits
- Exposure to latest technologies
- Freedom to innovate
- Flexible work schedule
- Remote access
- Lots of vacation time
- Lots of smart and skilled engineers

Cons

- No more "Citrix culture" after all the acquisitions over the past several years
- Management is pretty useless and only cares about milestones; software quality has suffered as a result of shipping known severe bugs because it would affect the manager's bonus pay
- Management compensation is mostly driven by achieving artificial goals; they spend more time worried about them than ensuring the products are being delivered with great features and high quality
- Significant amount of dead wood in engineering who are kept around because of who they know

Advice to Senior Management

Employee morale in FTL engineering was very low when I left and does not appear to have improved much based on what I hear from friends who still work there. When the economy improves, I predict a lot of good engineers will be leaving for greener pastures.

The root cause of many of the problems in FTL engineering can be traced back to an internal coup in 2006 that was orchestrated by several middle managers. They successfully removed most of the old-time Citrix engineering management and replaced them with their sycophants. Since then, FTL engineering management has become a Good Old Boys Club of mostly H1-B's who look out for each other and ensure work keeps going to Bangalore regardless of the demonstrated consequences. If you plan on working in FTL, my advice is to try to get on a team that is managed out of the UK rather than under the FTL management team. The UK managers still have the best interest of the company at heart to some degree.

Citrix was a fun place to work until the politics took over. At the corporate level, I think the company made too many acquisitions too fast and kept the acquired management teams intact. There was no attempt to integrate the newcomers into the existing culture; rather they were allowed to do whatever they wanted and now there are fiefdoms all across Citrix. In one extreme case, you have an EVP of engineering who has no engineering background and cares more about color schemes and icons than the technical value of the product.

Pros

- Great technology
- alot of very capable and intelligent people
-huge market opportunity now

Cons

- far too much internal politics
- many roles have little to no career path
- Regular pointless changes in messaging and product naming

Advice to Senior Management

Give all employees stock options. There was much less political maneuvering and back stabbing when every one got stock options each year.

Pros

The company offers a very competetive salary and benefits package for employees. Flexble work from home schedules is also a great perk.

Cons

There is a perception by executive management that existing talent from within the organization is less competent than that of candidates that are recruited from off the street. Unfortunate to say the least.

Advice to Senior Management

People are your greatest asset. Remember your employees and customers are the reason for your success and the reason you reached the level of success today. Time for a fresh CEO.