Pros

Well managed company from Finance to Product Strategy
Great environment for capable and ambitious people
Small yet global company feel

Cons

Slow in making its footprint on the stock market, despite its track record
Great employee benefits, but too little recognition from the street
Definitely not as bold as other high-tech companies, e.g. Apple

Advice to Senior Management

Listen to your employees, probe us more often
Stick to the communicated plans, they seem like they will make a difference in getting the company to the next level of growth.

Pros

People are very nice and helpful. My supervisor was a PHD so very knowledgeable. Everybody treats me with respect, as an intern it is very valuable...

Cons

One of their office is in Vancouver (WA) which is a small town. The location is not ideal but Portalnd is close and one can easily live in Portland and work in Vancouver.

Advice to Senior Management

Nothing in particular, my manager was very nice and available when I needed him. He also helped me to find occupation during the week-end.

Pros

Many people here are nice and relatively genuine. Many also value hard work. The compensation isn't really bad all things considered. The products marketed are fabulous.

Cons

Competency in management is a hit or miss. There are a lot of silos. The internal database infrastructure is messed up! No central administration hub for all the darn databases that exist. It's very difficult to find what you need. Some of the process, specifically those dealing with procurement are really ridiculous and cumbersome. Overall, clear communication from management down to the subordinates is not very good...lacks quite a bit of attention.

Advice to Senior Management

Take some courses on how to motivate your team and harness good skills. Build a backbone for getting rid of ineffective people!

Pros

Good pay rate. Latest high-tech products. Fremont/Newark is nice town. Some company social events happen every 4-6 weeks, but your boss may be there, so is it really social ? Friendly people, no really obnoxious ones. Very good vacation benefits, and other benefits. They are alternate lifestyle friendly, with domestic partner benefits. If you like hard work, this is the job for you. Yes, from some previous posts, the facility is a little older than some, but there are no moldy refrigerators, and infinite cups of free coffee and expresso are available everywhere. Doing OK in the recession with cash reserves (Lake Toplitz?).

Cons

I love my job, I am grateful to this fine company for allowing me to luxuriate in their hot tubs all day, while playing with the fine Lotus Notes application, which I hear is dating Skynet and plotting the destruction of all mankind.

Advice to Senior Management

Get rid of Lotus Notes as fast as humanly possible, using lasers or fire axes. Danger, Will Robinson !!!
 It has personal problems, like making pages that are impossible to print, being endless and unorganized, and inscrutable. It is obviously based on MSDOS 0.9 and spaghetti FORTRAN code from a 6-yr old. It has a user interface that is anti-Microsoft. Anyone who knows Office will NOT be able to use it, by definition.
Otherwise, I love my job like my home life-size poster of Madonna.

Pros

Great products with good partners. Clear goals on programs. Clear goals on the key products for the year. Benefits are include a stock program. Logitech is a good corporate citizen supporting charitable causes. Community spirit for holidays and celebrating accomplishments. Teams are supportive and help each other. The products are very good and sleek. There are clear owners for most functions.

Cons

Database are lacking. The dependence on Lotus Notes created Notes only databases. You spend an inordinate amount of time searching for information and posting in various documents, spreadsheets, and emails. This means most people spend their days just doing updates and posting rather than looking for opportunities and forward thinking.

Logitech has bought several companies, but the consolidation process is very fragmented. Senior management allows the bought company to continue business without complying with the Logitech systems and brand. There is no firm schedule and no enforcement with consequences.

Advice to Senior Management

It is time to get some real databases and get off Lotus Notes.

Companies bought by Logitech need to be in Logitech systems and online in less than 6 months and senior management has to make it happen.

Pros

Respect for work life balance.

Cons

There is a bias to hire from the outside or hire consultants instead of developing or utilizing internal capability. This may not be unusual, but it can be distracting. Also, there is a huge variability in management styles from group to group.

Advice to Senior Management

If you are going to say "our biggest asset is our people" TREAT them like that.

Pros

It's a globally recognized company. You feel yourself a part of a big team. The company has gathered many great professionals and just great individuals, who create a friendly working environment. The company provides in most cases a fair balance between work and private life of people, though stressful situations and pushing from top down occurs quite often as well.

Cons

Lack of technical leadership. The top management does not respect the feedback from the engineers. The product development roadmaps are built with no serious analysis of technical and ecomomical factors. A good help would be a detailed analysis of the competitors' products. The analysis should include the choice of technologies, general architecture, set of features, model lines, etc.

Advice to Senior Management

Listen to the professionals, work as a team, not as a commander and a batallion of soldiers.

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

Joined the Harmony division of Logitech 6 months ago. Love working here. The products are cool and there is great team environment. The company has grown from a start up mentality to a professional company. Recently some outstanding engineering professionals have joined from some well known companies. Some of the best engineers can be found here today. Company is changing from
I" to "We" , some people left or ... as this happened. Lots of customer research, usability studies - engineers are encouraged to attend - very new for me good learning experience !

Cons

Fast paced environment requires you to keep you to speed on all the technologies. Learning some great new skills and technologies. Training is awesome - hard to sometimes keep up. Will like to hear more about other products from Logitech.

Advice to Senior Management

Stay on path! Love the focus on developing people. Encourage engineers at Harmony to bring their friends to come work here! Reference bonus will be nice :)

Pros

Company had a great can do spirit. Made fun products that were sexy and funtional. Hardware Engineering especially industrial design is a core competency. Have a loyal following of users. Global company with a european flair. Good coffee!

Cons

New management does not espouse the same spirit de core. People are less motivated then they were with previous CEO. New management does not incite the same passions.

Headed downhil in many ways, sorry to say....

Advice to Senior Management

Get the hell of of there and let someone who knows what they are doing and is passionate about it take over.