Logitech Reviews in Mississauga, ON (Canada)

Pros

1) Excellent product, globally leading products, Harmony Remote. 2) Software team is developing brand new application. After the outside crisis it should be in a good position for growth. 3) Management is trying to develop and grow people. Training investment. 4) Scrum process 5) Excellent General Manager 6) People are generally very good and competent 7) Relatively solid and creative working relationship 8) Innovative 9) Good investment in usability and consumer research

Cons

1) Too much top-down approach to schedules and planning 2) The mgmt. (both Mississauga and Fremont) is disconnected often from realistic goals - often the wish list 3) Product management (director level) in New York very disconnected and extremely poor in doing things. A lot of bad decision and incompetent work from them. Vendor management non-existent. A lot of grandstanding without results. A lot of money spent with very small results 4) Software product mgmt. extremely bad, minding the things they don't understand and does not complete their own job (example major rewrite of stories done by someone else) . The new PM hopefully influence change. 4) Meeting quality within projected timeline is not realistic 5) Product /hardware team has a lot of organizational and execution challenges 6) Expectations are sometimes too high and unrealistic 7) Longer hours for someone 8) Support team business model broken (too costly)

Advice to Senior Management

1) The layoff was too deep, sooner rather than later you need additional good people
2) Software Product management is a lot of talk, with negative results not even zero results. Top down needs to be changed, starting from New York's director below to the more experienced PM.
3) You need to bring additional engineering talent
4) Hardware side has execution challenges. Main delivery challenges are there.
5) Right type of investment and help from Fremont is needed but additional creative freedom would be helpful
6) Get realistic plan and closely monitor real not presented to mgmt. progress
7) Be aggressive with the market push
8) More real innovations
9) Develop sound support business model

Pros

When you tell people you work at Logitech, they know where you work, and respect the products. Being a small division of Logitech, everyone gets some exposure to what will likely become award winning products when these products are still in the earliest design stages. Being a company that creates consumer computer peripherals and other electronics, you see your work reviewed publicly by the media, through customer reviews on sites like Amazon and in various forums. A resume that shows a reasonable amount of time at Logitech is likely to anyone's career -- It has definitely helped mine post Logitech.

Cons

The politics and lack of empowerment.

The Mississauga office is an incredibly political environment, in the negative sense of the word. Very little seems to get done through the well publicized processes, but rather anything accomplished is done through political machinations, and verbally sabotaging other projects with senior management to get resources for your own project.

It is a very stressful environment, where immediate turn around is expected on complex work, and "No" or "let me think about it" are not acceptable answers. Work life balance is not a consideration -- work is expected to come first, at all times of the day, and you are expected to feel privileged for being given the opportunity to work at Logitech.

Project management in the development area is almost non-existant, and is focused more on presenting what senior management wants to hear rather than managing projects and risks, and presenting the facts to management.

A few years ago this division was very development centric, and a stronger product management role was needed. New senior management was brought in and they addressed this issue by giving product management complete say over everything, but did not hire, nor train product managers to assume this role. While this is a difficult situation for other functions, I feel most sorry for product managers who are now required to make every decision.

Overall this is a very stressful place to work, and it takes a special person who knows how to work a corrupt system and who has a thick skin in the face of political attacks to succeed here.

Advice to Senior Management

Walk the talk.

You hold a lot of town hall meetings where you talk about things like empowerment, and customer centricity, and then do the exact opposite.

Saying you are empowered, because the video we showed you says this is a good thing, while removing decision making power and centralizing it with extreme senior management and product managers doesn't jive.

Talking about the importance of listening to the customer and then selecting projects that customers are clearly saying they don't want but that are pet projects of senior management doesn't jive.

You need to understand that you are managing a very intelligent work force, and feeding them platitudes and rhetoric while acting in an opposite manner, and publicly rewarding people who act in the oposite manner, is noticed and greatly impacts employee morale and completely erodes your work force's oppinion and respect for you and your decisions. Which means, that in the end many very smark people don't work hard or care about the products they work on any more

Pros

Really cool products. Fun, challenging problems to solve. Great team atmosphere among organizational peers. Many really talented employees, and an excellent manager or two.

Cons

Lots and lots of hard work, with very little thanks. Creative and innovative engineers are stifled in an overly political and sometimes hostile work environment. Management is not willing to accept responsibility for the consequences of their decisions. Too many decisions are made trying to have their cake and eat it too. The schedules are unrealistic and the stress of meeting unreasonable deadlines is downloaded onto engineering.

Advice to Senior Management

If you want to make more innovative, leading-edge products, cultivate an environment where creative expression is welcomed and praised, instead of instituting mind-numbing, ill-informed processes which allow the dead weight to further entrench themselves in the organization. Build time for innovation and learning into product schedules. Find out what makes your engineers tick and use that information to leverage their full potential.

One last thing, just because you say something, or put it on a slide, doesn't mean its true, or will just happen. Back up your words with a solid strategy and personally ensure it is put into action!

Pros

Most are good people. Some are jerks. Great products (sometimes).

Cons

New management blows goats. Re-orgs killed the morale across the board.

Advice to Senior Management

The remote is not a mouse. Get to know who your staff. When you say you care about customers, mean it.

Pros

Good team and fun place to work - everyone gets along and wants to help each other. One gets a chance to learn new skills. Have the opportunity to learn about customers and their needs. "Lunch and learn" sessions about customers are great. I have not worked in a company that has so much focus on quality and customer experience. It makes it hard for all of us as we are asked to meet tough standards but in the end is great for our customers.

Cons

Not much of a downside but have to work with the teams from asia. It would be helpful to have classes in chinese so that we can communicate better with our partners in Asia sometimes. Also, we need to balance a lot of things at any given time. Would also like some formal outside training.

Advice to Senior Management

Good effort on sharing the strategy. Would like to be involved earlier and have a chance to contribute more ideas. Management should encourage employees even more to share ideas with their functional and project teams. Also, the team appreciates easy access to everyone in the company including management.

Pros

Cool company that makes exciting products. Management team does a good job in communicating with the employees. The management team has made lots of good changes in the past year. There is focus on hiring smart people. Many people have been promoted from within. I have never seen so much focus on sharing customer knowledge. There is genuine interest in people's careers - that is unique!

Cons

The facility feels cramped at times. I hear we are moving shortly. The management team has made some tough decisions in the past year - they should have anticipated some turnover and prepared for it.

Advice to Senior Management

Like the new direction and the new technologies. Keeps our skills cutting edge. Your focus on building the right team is correct and will pay off in the future.

Pros

Excellent products!! I would have a lot of cutting edge toys available once in a while. A huge number of trainings -- to a point that you might not have time to do the real work.

Cons

It seems to be a company that treats outsider (consultants) more than its internal employees. You will need to prove really hard in order to earn the trust that you should.

Advice to Senior Management

Take actions on what the employee said. Don't just say I agree in front of the employee, and acts nothing afterward. It is truly unrespectful to the employee. Allocate more time for employee to work on his own. More creative and outstanding product will be created.

Pros

There is a certain prestige in working at the company with its name recognition

Cons

Incompentent executives, no respect for employees at all, no understanding by the executive team of what is required to get a product out the door. Executives listen to employees that have no respect of their peers.

Advice to Senior Management

Quit. Seriously, look at the number of people that have left and the quality of the people you have lost, explain why you fired the only manager that was able to get products out the door. If you can't do that, leave before you do more damage to the company and the Harmony brand of remote controls

Pros

There are an excellent group of people that work at Logitech in the Remote control business unit. All employees have a genuine interest in seeing the company succeed. The dedication, team work and sense of pride within the company are outstanding, proof positive is the company’s journey of continual improvement which includes but is not limited to professional training and personal mentoring programs. Logitech is truly interested in doing whatever it takes to build a team of successful individuals whom are focused on being the leader in every market they enter....these are not only words, they put their dollars behind it....whether people work as customer service agents..... or directors, there is a true sense of investing in continual improvement. Harmonies is the leader in our segment and continue to improve our R&D, product mix and people in an effort to improve and dominate our existing line of products while entering new markets. The management team brings a wealth of experience and knowledge from a variety of industries and is extremely focused on making Logitech the world leader and innovator in the remote controls business.

Cons

Logitech is growing at an astonishing rate, with that comes some hick-ups. These are not uncommon when dealing with this type of business. The team is overachieving in managing its growth and is as dedicated and competent as any other organization that I have been a part of. Comparatively speaking I think Logitech is a great place to work and it will only get better.

Advice to Senior Management

I think they are doing a great job, I don't believe they should make any changes. Any setbacks they may have experienced are simply growing pains that all company tends to experience. Keep up the good work and dedication to the success of the company and its employees and shareholders!

Pros

Profit sharing pays off - We haven't had a truly bad quarter for years (there was one with only single-digit growth... for shame!)

Flexible work hours.. though there seems to be movement to restrict that.

Working from home... some are able to make it a regular thing.

Cons

Incapable Project Managers; too many unproductive meetings, PM's that require babysitting by their own manager (doesn't that inspire confidence?). Projects that are apparently run by two or more PM's at the same time (and who really knows which controls the project), PM's who don't understand what they are being told (or don't want to), others who couldn't motivate a dog to wag its own tail.

Product Managers who have their heads so far up each others asses that they haven't got a clue what they really want in a product, or from their engineers. Perhaps that's not fair - they want everything, they want it now, and they don't want to spend any money to get it. While there are elements to this that constitute so-called "good business practice", Logitech's Project Managers seem to take this to extremes, resulting in an endless barrage of complex functional requirements with ridiculous cost and schedule restrictions - you can't spec-out, design, build, and validate a "10x Customer Experience" on $2 worth of (mostly new) hardware in 5 months. Especially when you are STILL SPECCCING IT OUT (hardware and software) with 5 months to go until Feature Complete.

Lack of respect. I observed an employee asking the PM for assistance with collecting some data in order to produce a valid document required for a project Gate transition. The manager proceeded to explain that "we're a team", "we're all in this together", and that the employee should stop using the word "I" and get his work done. Ultimately, this employee was unable to accomplish the task effectively, and was called down for it.
I later had a similar experience with this same so-called leader.

Advice to Senior Management

Listen, and I mean REALLY listen to what your engineers have to say. Trust their knowledge, experience and especially their effort estimates - they're doing all the work, they know what it takes.

Empowerment isn't just a line on a presentation, if you are really serious about empowerment then stop handcuffing us.

Innovation requires risk. We can't be "Empowered to Innovate" when you consistently follow the path of least resistance. Doing the easy thing, making the easy product in order to make the easy money isn't going to attract the ace talent you're going for. You'll be lucky to retain what you have.
Saying we're all Empowered is one thing, but I have yet to see any evidence.

Stop Hiring Managers and start hiring Engineers. Managers do not design and build products.