Symantec – “A great place to work, but only if you are up to the challenge.”
0 of 1 people found this helpfulMay 9, 2009
2009-05-09 18:38 PDT
Details
Pros
Symantec is the third ranked software company on the fortune 500. The business culture combines the professionalism of IBM with the relaxed nature of google. Symantec embraces the concept of corporate responsibility, working to treat it's employees and vendors well, and taking active organization wide steps to reduce its carbon footprint. In other words - for a big evil corporation, symantec is actually fairly respectable. There is a sense of pride associated with working for the globally recognized leader in security software.
This is an organization which rewards hard work, ability, and creativity.
Symantec tends to compensate very competitively, attracting top talent. Aside from the obvious direct benefits of above average pay, having highly competent coworkers makes everyone's job easier. It is easier to make a handoff when you can trust your coworkers to deliver on their end of the bargain.
Of course, against a backdrop of top professionals, laziness and incompetence stands out like a 75 pound schoolboy in the middle of a professional football game. Such employees are dealt with quickly for the sake of the whole.
That's not to imply that a single mistake will end your career, but a person who demonstrates a pattern of poor performance will not last long with Symantec. If this strikes you as a bad thing, you should probably apply elsewhere.
Cons
As with any large corporation, communication can be difficult in all directions - be it across different functional teams, different product lines, or even within the direct chain of command. The good news is that you are on your own.
The bad news is that you are on your own.
Everything moves slowly in a large organization. Which, paradoxically, can lead to being handed a lot of 'impossible' deadlines. Deadlines which could have been much more managable had management put you in the loop three months ago when they made the decision to move forward with a project.
Advice to Senior Management
Way to weather the storm guys. I'm moving up in a freefall economy thanks to your capable leadership. Stay the course.
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Comments (6)
Inappropriate?
Almost everything in this review is completely untrue. The company refuses to compensate competetively and has been bleeding talent as a result. The bean counters are in firm control and weak, small-minded managers are the norm.
McAfee has been eating Symantec's lunch at the enterprise level for a while now, and Symantec only recently decided to do something about it.
Inappropriate?
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As for being a 'malicious, narrow-minded manager', I can assure you that I am not any kind of manager (malicious or otherwise). I'm pretty sure that track would bore me at any rate. I am much more interested in threat landscape research than brand workshops and mission statements.
It is apparent that I am fortunate to be in the department I am in, based on the experiences that I am hearing. Perhaps being so isolated from home office allows us a bit of latitude in defining our local corporate culture.
My job has its issues - you try explaining SSDT hooking (much less why it matters) to a roomful of suits. There's no shortage of megalomaniacal bottom rung managers looking to claw their way to the middle - all struggling against each other for position.
But at the end of the day, I've guided the development of some awesome tech, helped customers, helped our call center agents, travelled the world, designed side-channel attacks against SSL (for testing purposes only), hardened networks, met with D.O.D. security researchers - and hackers, and I have been consistently rewarded for my efforts. Every day it's a new challenge.
If I focused on the problems, this could be a miserable job - but where else could I get this diverse of a vocational experience? So I stick to my work, avoid the jerks where possible, and for the most part I love the job.
What part of the organization are you guys in? If the experience is that bad for you, I should like to avoid those departments.
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Inappropriate?
by Reverse is and you got it: