Hitachi Data Systems Reviews

Pros

HDS is a mature stable work place. You are expected to come in do good work, and then go home and have a life. The company really seems to care about employee health and well being. Everything from the gym, healthy food, to health check incentives. (Maybe HDS is trying to live up to out motto maybe it's just enlightened self interest...)

Cons

This is a large corpration which is a subsidiary of a large Japanese Megacorp. There is a lot of process for nearly every thing as a result. (The vacation/sick leave scheduling for example seems to be a relic of the 80s, and confuses new hires.) On the whole it's far better than the average large company.

Pros

-They are very good at recognition
- Salary is very fair
- Everyone is great to work with

Cons

- At times a lot of work is received

Pros

Good company good salary. Balance of life work and family

Cons

Sometimes stressful, hard to find information.

Advice to Senior Management

Great vision

Pros

Flex-time, remote work allowed. Interesting, quirky people. No age discrimination at all.

Things are so bad for the workers that a kind of amusing gallows humor and esprit de corp has developed (is that a pro?).

Nice washrooms, if the lines don't get too long.

Cons

Spineless, mid-level management makes mutually exclusive promises to warring parties and doesn't tell those that need to perform the actual work about the promises until the last minute leaving you, the flunky, to clean up their mess at the cost of much wasted labor and your tarnished reputation.

Homegrown tools/processes are completely useless and poorly implemented. You will find, at most, one other person in twenty who is using the same tool set/process even though many of you are producing the same ultimate deliverables.

Very low morale and too many contractors.

The Japanese division wins every battle - including how to write English!

Low pay.

Advice to Senior Management

If you ask for advice, take it seriously. For once, actually try to do what you ask the laborers to do all the time. Try the tools you force them to use.

Pros

Decent pay and benefits
Very good work/life balance - work from home policies are excellent
As in any other company, you will find a good amount of hard working, honest people

Cons

Favoritism is rampant (particularly Corporate functions)
Excessive management layers
Stale corporate culture (result of ossified Japanese culture + local management practices)
Systems and processes from the stone age
Tendency to complicate everything

Advice to Senior Management

Difficult one, as management is part of the problem. However, a few tips:
- simplify
- try your best to truly rewards your best performers, and not just those that agree with you
- stop with the excessive spinning - it is getting tiresome

Pros

I work with an amazing group of people that are team focused, collaborative, fun and have a true passion for what they do.

Cons

Work life balance continues to be a challenge for me, although self induced. We're very busy which is exciting as HDS continues to grow.

Advice to Senior Management

Continue to be transparent.

Pros

Great work life balance. Great people to work with. Independency in decision making.

Cons

Great for people in sales, service and product management. Still at a nacent stage as far as engineering is concerned as most is done in Japan.

Advice to Senior Management

Great leadership, great vision. Growing organically in a competive space may not always be the right choice. Recent acquisitions have been welcome change in this strategy.

Pros

Strong leadership team, consistent messaging toward a vision. A lot of flexibility on how and where you get your job done. Bonuses are very good, company shares success with employees. Friendly people, a strong sense of team spirit throughout the company in every country.

Cons

Not everything is automated, a lot of spreadsheet work. Many things could be done better if we had more 'process improvement' in areas more than just sales order processes.

Advice to Senior Management

Have your meetings in more places besides headquarters.

Pros

Company senior leadership walk the talk, they are accesible and strive for fairness and create a winning culture in spite a difficult economical environment.

Cons

We need to enhance our branding and product recognition, we have a great portfolio of products that are the best secret in town.

Advice to Senior Management

Focus on people empowerment to reinforce the need to take faster decisions at lowest level possible to improve speed to address customer issues / deals.

Pros

HDS fosters Wa, Makoto, and Kaitakusha-Seishin. These are harmony, respect, trust, work-life balance, and a number of other important facets of life. Bringing these principles to the workplace encourages employees to be here because they want to be, and not because they have to be.

Cons

Sometimes it is difficult to meet and greet with people you don't know. A point isn't always made to introduce new employees to their peers or superiors if they do not interact with them on a day-to-day basis.

Advice to Senior Management

The biggest problem I have seen in the workplace is that departments don't always speak with each other. I believe that there should be some care taken to ensure that there is more business interaction among the business units so that everyone understands and appreciates the roles others in the company play.