IAC Reviews

Pros

Flexible working schedule, we can come anytime. And it is ok to work from home
Have many technical challenges in working. Working on the cutting edge answer/search engine. There are many open research and engineering topics. ASK is very good starting point for the newly graduated PHDs and MSs.
Good collaboration among the co-workers. Most developers are very young, they can work together to solve problems, often over a game of ping pong / Wii / Footsball

Cons

Ask.com has vey strong competitors. ASK lacks resouce to be the best search engine or answer engine. The scope that ASK can developed itself is very limited. Top executives seems to be not very interested in ASK's own core technology.

Advice to Senior Management

none

Pros

The company is big enough for you to move around to different products and fields. If you are passionate and work hard and smart, there are plenty of areas for advancement in testing, development, and management. Although you may need to jump teams, projects, or just mangers, you can always find somewhere to grow.

Cons

always short on employees. This means you will most likely be short of developers and QA engineers on your team forcing you to work a little more, and cut or postpone features. Psychologically, this can be a demoralizing, especially when you are excited about and believe in your project.

Advice to Senior Management

pay close attention of what employee cares.

Pros

Your coworkers are wonderful. There is a high percentage of competent people and a low percentage of egos and drama. People help each other and reach out to include people in social activities. There have been more cliques forming lately, though.

Cons

Lots of secrecy regarding job advancement. Salary scale is crazily scewed -- many of the most proficient workers are paid far less than people who are barely competent. There's almost no cost benefit analysis involved in large projects, which leads to huge amounts of money being sunk into plans that are highly unfavorable to the company.

Advice to Senior Management

"Market research" should entail more than identifying successful products and attempting to clone them. Analyzing market saturation, tracking changes among target audiences, as well as weighing cost of production versus likely income are all obvious things that should be done before investing large amounts of company time into new initiatives.

Pros

Edison: Friendly environment among software engineers. They work hard, are respectful and genuine. Most of them are really smart.

Cons

Edison: Management makes unbelievable mistakes. Promotion and career growth suck. This makes people look for jobs in other places.

Advice to Senior Management

Edison: Let the old guys go away and listen to what the software engineers have to say. Promote people who are smart and have experience, not the ones that the big bosses think are smart. Because they aren't and don't get the bigger picture. Try to learn from Barry.

Pros

IAC is a fast paced company that wants to win in many sectors of the web. There is the real potential for cross talk across the various companies there and the potential for young managers and employees to move ahead very fast. What they do have of be aware of is to be disciplined about the sectors that they enter and no to stretch themselves to thin.

Cons

The company is not focused and is running in many directions at once. Management hasnt been able to stick to a long term operational plan

Advice to Senior Management

Stick to a plan and execute - you have talented people and it sometimes takes time to build something great. The spinoffs that are structured now are a good idea.

Pros

great network of accomplished and interesting people to interact with

Cons

Lack of focus and micromanagement from senior level execs who can't possibly understand individual businesses better than those who lead them

Advice to Senior Management

let people run their own businesses

Pros

Good benefits, work-life balance, very entrepenurial

Cons

large company often causes a lot of delay and red tape

Advice to Senior Management

more communication

Pros

established company. And if you get into the good books of a couple of people and are a gadget geek, chances are you will get promoted irrespective of how good you are.

Cons

No respect for other cultures and people from other countries and origin. I cannot say that about everyone at that place. The HR team and some of the old manangement folks were good.They have the classic case of imcompetents hiring and promoting the incompetent.

Advice to Senior Management

Hire the right management people. Stop Nepotism. understand what the people really do bfore promoting them. agreeing with you on everything does not warrant promotion. See if poeple are really qualified

Pros

Pay and management ignoring issues so you don't have to deal with them

Cons

Very top heavy, could care less about work/life balance. The head of Ask is using a private jet and could care less about the staff, just a puppet.

Advice to Senior Management

Start thinking about innovative ideas, don't copy others.

Pros

ability to impact change and see the results of your efforts

Cons

overall strategy is still evolving

Advice to Senior Management

need for more frequent communication on strategies and progress to date to all levels