MarketLive Reviews

Pros

Beautiful location, interesting software and connections to retail, nice people, good work life balance.

Cons

Still struggling with the vision for their product. Too focused on customer feature requests and not enough time on building appropriate infrastructure.

Advice to Senior Management

More long-term thinking.

Pros

Good industry to work in

Cons

Too much work because everyone got laid off.

Advice to Senior Management

Don't let your best people go.

Pros

product development have a prsitive attitude about long hours and lack of structure

Cons

Lack of structure and framework, and hence lack of standards to folllow
Contractor trump the FTE in decision making process which shows lack of structure and maturity

Advice to Senior Management

Either change the direction or change the management, otherwise it will be hard to find a buyer

Pros

Friendly, local vibe environment near the Petaluma river. Professional and clean. Nice people. Decent space and workload. Services and products have lots of potential.

Cons

Potential doesn't come to fruition. Talented people end up stuck there rotting. Lack of training and skill development. Engineering-focused managers dominate everyone to the detriment of the organization. Not balanced, lack of communication between groups (all kowtow to engineering mgr), lack of industry-standard functional specs, lack of appropriate internal processes. Cart before the horse where engineers design the product instead of following the needs of the customer - that was my impression. Have never seen a s/w company run so poorly in this regard.

Advice to Senior Management

Engineering Management should follow a best-practices model where they create what is needed based on customer demand instead of cowboying it and controlling the other groups by force; too old school, inflexible, not collaborative, open, dynamic. Offer more employee FUN so it isn't such a dreary place to work. One picnic a year does not a fun company make.

Pros

Note: this is based on the situation a couple years ago. I hear it's somewhat better now.
About the only "pro" was that there were some good ecomm ideas buried in some buggy code.
Also, some of the folks there were very good, but almost all of the good people have left now (many to the competition).

Cons

So many problems, I'll just summarize. Basically, ML was a company in free fall. The operational state was so bad that most of the time was spent reacting to continous production outages and getting yelled at by (justifiably) angry customers on the phone. The fact that ML has any customers left is a testament to the strength of inertia. ML is ultimately a case study for some classic startup problems, including unplanned and unmanaged growth and direction.

Advice to Senior Management

Supposedly ML is making progess now. Management change, etc. Probably too little, too late, but guess we'll see. My advice? Get a time machine. Should have been fixed 10 years ago.

Pros

small enough envriroment. hard working people. lots of stuffs for you to learn.have chance to know lots of smart people.

Cons

high working pressure. time card needs to be filled each day accurated to half an hour. tech on call for one week on almost every 1.5 month.

Advice to Senior Management

improve the product. managment needs to know who is doing what work. who can do the work, who can't. move more people into support.

Pros

Fun atmosphere, company bbqs, unique place near the Petaluma River. Small amount of people, every one works really hard and together most of the time.

Cons

Seems like they hire management level positions where they don't need it. Need more people on ground level where most of the magic happens.

Advice to Senior Management

Make more of a note for the employees who actually do the hard work and are not getting paid for how great they are.

Pros

If you want to work with some of the most creative and hardworking indiviuals this would be the place for you. The support you will recieve from your co-workers is refreshing.

Cons

Senior management needs considerable work in their ability to relate. Most of management do not have children and are not understanding when it comes to support a family both in compensation and time off.

Advice to Senior Management

Be generous in your praise and compensation. Your employees work very hard for you and the company. Lack of the above is the reason I left.

Pros

The Petaluma office had a good vibe with great people - also have a welcome dog policy! Professional team is great to work with.

Cons

Management of projects is very poor. Prioritizing and scheduling of timelines is unrealistic.

Advice to Senior Management

Start respecting your employees. Have a personal / career growth path well defined. Make yearly reviews a must and take the reviews seriously. Promotions and raises should be discussed and implemented.

Pros

Interesting Technology (at first), intelligent team to work with, great work/family balance (at first). Pro-Dog policy was really cool (I love animals) but the fact they opened a new office in Foster City and the Dog Policy was non-existent was disappointing.

Cons

Poor Scheduling, over promising, poor prioritizing of tasks, "drive by" mentality reigned. Plus, moving into a new facility in Foster City, was fantastic (loved the building), however when it could accommodate, 150+ people the average attendance was 12-18 people - a HUGE waste of real estate. The Emeryville office was small but worked for 12-18 very nicely. Moving to Foster City added a huge amount of Driving to my daily commute and that was just no good.

Advice to Senior Management

Powerpoint presentations are no substitute for organization.