Ariba – “Good place to learn, not for career advancement”

Pros

Market leader, gets people exposed to the cutting edge of Spend Management. In general good peers tend to be very well educated in the field, and contribute significantly to running projects.
Benefits package is outstanding, and salires tend to be a little above average.

Cons

Career advancement was very poor. Remote employees were reporting to managers that changed in average every 9 months during my time there, therefore preventing the creation of a plan that was meaningful.
Internal politics are very close to be unmanageable. Managemen teams in Pittsburgh, Atlanta and Sunnyvale tended to communicate very poorly and created a lot of friction and compromises.
Executive compensation is hugely out-sized. The only quarter in which management forfeited their bonuses, the company was suddenly profitable by a wide margin

Advice to Senior Management

The incredible loss of talent that currently affects Ariba is a direct result of internal staffing practices that try to extract maximum performance with little guidance or formal training. My team was top-heavy, meaning a lot of expensive management overhead, and not that many delivery people who could actually deliver the work. The team members were heavily overworked and given additional responsibilities without properly offloading others, with the result that we couldn't deliver the goods without working 70 hours a week.