Compuware Reviews in Detroit, MI Area

Pros

Medical benefit costs were reasonable.
Detroit Headquarters building was impressive looking, and in a good location. Also liked the gym, cafeteria, and free covered parking.

Cons

Supervisors/Managers who share little information, and will "throw you under the bus" if a client complains about anything.
The outsourcing site in Dearborn was the worst I've ever encountered. The CareTech staff I met were pretty good, however some of the Compuware managers were political, unsupportive and their antics were surprisingly supported by the IT Director. I was told the best way to survive was to "keep your mouth shut and your head down...".
Little chance to grow and learn new skills.

Advice to Senior Management

Start acting like business men and take care of business in a honorable way. The recent press about hiring the former Detroit Mayor into Covisint continues to damage Compuware's overall credibility in the marketplace.

Pros

Downtown HQ building with on-site child care, gym and cafeteria, proximity to restaurants, free covered parking, close to public transit etc
Financially stable company
Good place to work if you done care much about technically challenging jobs, advancement and career growth
Decent health benefits
Overtime pay depending on client contract

Cons

If you are in professional services, you should know that every other option outside of compuware is better
Your fate is determined by your client - be prepared to lose your job the day you come back to the bench
Too much politics which interferes with anything good happening within the company

Advice to Senior Management

I have no advice to the management - coz they know what they are doing. I guess they are cutting staff and selling useless products and sizing up the company for sale (but I do wonder who would buy a company like this).
My advice to employees: Watch your backs and look for a better job outside!
My advice to prospective employees - Dont join CPWR!
My advice to shareholders: Hold your shares - you will make a profit when the management sells the company for good soon!

Pros

Established brand name in IT, good product portfolio, excellent health care benefits. Some training and development opportunities. Expertise in several industry verticals.

Cons

Most groups except professional services (which is being painfully restructured) are tolerable, albeit politically charged. No vacation increase after maxing out at 3 weeks after 5 years AND no opportunity to 'buy' additional vacation time if desired. No annual merit raises until mid-2010.

Advice to Senior Management

More transparency about decision criteria is sorely needed. There is a lot of concern among employees who truly care about the 3-product strategy. What happens if they don't meet revenue and margin goals?

Pros

There are still some good people.

Cons

Very very poor strategies and management ethics

Advice to Senior Management

Hire a good strategic consultant and instead of firing excellent technical resources, fire unnecessary management staffs and cut unnecessary expenses.

Pros

The people on my immediate team are good to work with.

Cons

Trying to get coordinated efforts accomplished among multiple teams does not happen unless an executive says it will. There is no concept of working as a singular unit. Information that directly affects employees is withheld on a regular basis. Favoritism is rampant. Sales does not bother to learn what product they are selling, which leads to upset customers and fewer sales. Development effort is uncoordinated among products in the same "solution." Repeated attempts to 'cross the chasm' lowers the quality of current products, and weakens the offering. Changepoint sucks.

Advice to Senior Management

Since I have no immediate interaction with Senior Management, I cannot directly offer advice outside of what I notice, in that there is no effort by management to keep employees informed about things that may impact them. Employees learn of this through 'rumor' until we confirm after the fact that it was true. This creates a very low morale among employees when the rumor mill begins again.

Pros

Great benefits, great building, nice co-workers.

Cons

The most political, back-stabbing place in town where management by fear is the norm and expectations of 60+ hour work weeks are also the norm.

Advice to Senior Management

Treat people with respect and recognize employees who produce.

Pros

Compuware does pay a decent salary *if* you come from another company.

Cons

Upper management is terrible. They are completely schedule and feature driven. Quality is an after-thought. It is more important for Compuware to meet some artificial deadline with their required feature set and then handle the quality issues through customer support after the software is sold.

Product management, the group responsible for setting product direction, is terrible. Their approach is to simply follow the, "other guys" feature sets. They don't have the talent or interest to develop a true vision for their products.

Advice to Senior Management

Stop thinking about your schedule bonuses at the expense of developments unpaid overtime which is required to make artificially imposed deadlines. Development pays for their ineptitude.

Pros

Good Medical benefits including BCBSM PPO plan, Heritage/Vision plans, Dental coverage, Nice Office space. Nice restaurants around. Free covered parking space for all its employees.

Early to this year, Compuware's professional services division was famous for its bench policy. Now the business model is revamped to the needs of business. Hope this would be successful for all its employees.

If you work for products, they are some of coolest and best products in the market. Mainframe products are a tough competitor to large consulting firms and organizations.

Cons

Lower salary compared to the industry standards, still maturing organization in terms of building professional services as a business model.

Advice to Senior Management

Promote me to higher responsibilities.

Pros

Excellent benefits. Time of is decent too.

Cons

Pay is way below average. If you do not escalate this issue it will never be taken care of and even if you do escalate, chances are they will still do nothing.

Advice to Senior Management

Appreciate the hard work that your employees do.

Pros

The salary is probably on the higher end of the range for equivalent positions in the Detroit area. The office in Detroit is nice. The cafeteria is nice, although grossly overpriced.

Cons

Senior management is very poor. There is no strong leadership present in the company. Highly technical employees are encouraged to move away from hands-on technology if they want to advance in their career. There is no upward career path for a hands-on technologist. Knowledge sharing and communication across the company is very poor. Very few senior architects are aware of emerging technologies and trends in the software development industry. Overall technologist (developers, architects, QA staff, etc) aptitiude level is probably below industry average.

Advice to Senior Management

Bring in senior leadership from the outside. Stop promoting purely from within. Compuware desperately needs senior leadership with experience running a software development and/or software professional services company.