Juniper Networks Reviews

Pros

People-oriented, leading edge, smart people

Cons

Lack of adequate funding for some projects

Pros

Supportive culture
Growth business
Working with very bright people

Cons

Can be political so know your internal customer very well

Advice to Senior Management

Continue to find ways to eliminate some of the processes that get in the way of doing your job

Pros

The people. I have been here 3 years and still has to run to into unfriendly or uncooperative co-worker..

Cons

A bit hectic.. We need more people..

Advice to Senior Management

Raise the salaries of the ones who do more of the pulling in a team

Pros

Its potential for innovation and disruption. Lots of knowledgeable people.

Cons

Feels like a retirement home for MSFT executives who don't understand the business we are in and what we need to do to gain marketshare. Upper mgmt are not held to same accountability as other ranks. Shortage of resources in field quota carrying headcount puts strain on business. Lots of burn out all throughout.. lost of passion and vision. Takes to long for anything to happen. Lost nibbleness and agility.

Advice to Senior Management

Pray....for guidance and wisdom. Listen to the field and get back and connect with field, they need you to listen AND act with urgency.

Pros

Never Say - there is no work. Always fast paced development and hectic...

Cons

Managers are too techy and do not plan WBS considering the people...more kind of dates driven....
Lack of proper communication from managers: You may not know what is happening within your business unit. Weekly meetings?More task oriented..
Overloaded - Always.

Advice to Senior Management

Great company to work...especially it has potential to grow leap and bounds...Get to the grass level ...bring in clear-cut promotion policy at levels (not only managers)

Pros

Juniper employees are very respectful of each other and aggressive about the work not to each other. The focus is on aggressively and ethically competing while maintaining an "authentic" atmosphere. Tenured and experienced workers are the norm and there are little if any bias's about age either older or younger though experience is valued. The pay is a little better than similar companies.

Cons

Resources are scarce at Juniper so you do whatever tasks are needed to be done to achieve desired results. This includes very lean staff and inadequate systems and processes. The benefits are ok - not stellar. Layoffs, although used sparingly are a management tool that is in the company DNA as is forced time off.

Advice to Senior Management

Invest in more modern systems, processes and field sales and sales support.

Pros

Juniper is just in the right market with the right product mix at the right time. The drivers are mobility and the cloud. They are an oligopolist and even a monopolist in many of their markets. Perhaps one of the few growing industries and Juniper is able to launch truly exciting products. Company will thrive despite various inner difficulties because of market demand.

The Juniper Way still supports fundumentally good ethics. Accomodates employee needs. Strong benefits. Not a micro managed place. Telecommuting. Competitive compensation. Workload - what you would expect from a tech company. You will meet some amazing and highly skilled individuals such as people you read about in books. You also may meet some great leaders and coaches (for caveats see below).

If you are not involved in HQ politics, you will make some great friends and have a good place to work. In any other function which involves HQ and politics, your desire to innovate or identify and fix gaps, or have any career growth desire, you may want to skip the opportunity - for now.

Cons

Company suceeds not because but despite their execs. New administration under Kevin Johnson introduced a top level of new people which were put on top of the existing organization with the premise to scale. Besides organizational bloat, we still have to see evidence of revenue and profit scale. New hiring appears relationship dependent and there are too many people with other agendas than the need of the business. (In our org we have one VP and one Director for each eight people doing actual work - after countless reorgs which always appears to benefit a few selected "buddies". After two years, I still try to figure out what many do or how their background is relevant to our business.)

Sheer amount of execs puts those guys under high pressure to justify their positions and leads to bad habits: such as execs recycling iniatives by giving them new names and claiming they started and delivered them - something perhaps called plagiatism in the world of academics - in any case not helpful for business. Other such habits are like mystery iniatives which do exist for real, we even have seen a GUI and fancy Powerpoints, but nobody ever saw a deliverable. Endless politics with total disregard of the impact on the business. War hungry execs with Directors as their armies moving into the battlefield over egos and power to conquer or destroy iniatives, while other execs are stunt, standing by in resignation and just trying to survive another day. (Needless to say that non of that addresses actual gaps.)

Disclaimer: there are also a lot of good guys but sometimes it is hard to say who has the upper hand. It is crowded in the lion cage. The bottom line is that the company might be well served with 20% of the number of execs and directors we have today.

Advice to Senior Management

Reevaluate whether it was such a good idea to suck all responsibility into a newly created "leadership" crop, from people who may not have had fancy titles but understood the business, and in fact built this company, to people with fancy titles and little clue and alternate agendas. Can we really effort to see all this talent leave, who actually built the company and delivered, replaced by some generic figures with fancy titles? Introduce accountability on the leadership level and allign with shareholder value. Take a hard look at success, identify and fix those gaps.

Pros

Hardcore Networking company
Salary
Good work if landed at right team.

Cons

Lot of work and expectations
HRs play politics

Pros

lots of new products
some real smart co-workers
friendly environment amongst peers
the company is very profitable

Cons

work/life balance is way out of whack
under staffed yet lots of redundancy functions between groups
back end systems and support are in disarray
everything seems to become a "fire drill"
more VPs and management layers than a company 5 times our size
lots of "fits and starts"

Advice to Senior Management

Juniper seems all geared up for the sales pitch but we cannot seem to execute very well afterwards. At this point we need to look at both winning and keeping customers. "Mission 10" is a desire and not a business plan. Develop some long term business goals, a business plan to achieve them and stop this short term, reactionary behavior. Like laying folks off one quarter only to rehire the next quarter. That just proves we're not a mature business organization and still operate day to day (like 12 year old children). Give up on the idea that IBM will just buy us.

Pros

Challenging, well paid, fun, lot of growth opportunities

Cons

Benefits is not that good

Advice to Senior Management

Increase 401k contribution to 40 to 50%