McAfee Reviews in Kitchener, ON Area

Pros

There are interesting project areas, if you are able to switch to a different project, it will help keep one interested. They do have some internal "online" training courses, but they are mostly useless to development, but you are able to view some books online which is nice to have handly. You get the typical free soda, coffee and doughnut Tuesdays. Management is willing to upgrade your hardware if you need them, as long as you can make a business case for new hardware, they will provide it.

Cons

McAfee lacks support for those who want to better themselves, there is no mentorship from higher ups or recognition of people who want to be more proactive and participate in other functional areas. Poor design ideas are thought up in a vacuum by management without asking for feedback or participation of team members. This attitude of management knows best is one reason McAfee is a follower and not a leader in its market. In fact this has been openly stated that we want to be just good enough and let our sales teams crank out the sales!

You feel like a hand not a brain over here, you have to really fight hard to get cool stuff to work on. Usually all the decisions are made for you and then it's up to you to complete the task. You are not appreciated as a thinking member of a bigger team. Lack of resources, people keep getting switched on and off projects. My biggest beef is that it seems like you're always busy working hard, but really noting gets accomplished. Lot of smart people here, but most have given up and it enough for them to just show up to work! This company needs a overhaul on being innovative!!! This can only come from the ground up, because the top-down approach is totally not working here.

Advice to Senior Management

Take pride in what you build, don't just sell the spin, invest in real home grown R&D.

The company needs to be "proactive" in involving keen developers in different aspects of the design and development cycles. This should be more than just attending a brain-numbing meeting. If I hear one more time the code is the document then we got the wrong people in charge who just don't get it.

Pros

Peers in engineering are smart, nice and are willing to help others.
Company will buy you the hardware you need to get you job done, you just need a good business case.
Pay is OK, nothing to get excited about. Negotiate well on hire!
Nice place for a short term.
Free pop, free donuts (once a week), monthly cake day to celebrate birthdays (very recent)
Good benefits

Cons

This is a "Yes" man's place.
No commitment from management to help grow you, they want you happy where you are.
Work life balance is not something valued here!They value deadline over quality.
Burn-out due to stupid duplication of cross-team roles. Developer expected to also be QA, do your job as a coder then do the job of a full-time QA. If QA gets a buggy drop, they+QA management whine about their "deadline" being stretched. QA doesn't want to work past 5pm! So developer have to put in extra hours, this is unfair!!!
They try to fit an agile process in a company that is more like a waterfall software development shop.
They lack real engineering standards, it's really painful how much dev managers are so old school they see no value is using a unit testing framework!
You can work your butt off, put in long hours and you will not get a pay raise to even match inflation. This is not only sad, but plain insulting! More so when a company sees double-digit growth for 8+ consecutive quarters! It's a slap in the face!!
No opportunity for growth, company is really small. you are pretty much stuck where you are.
Slow to embrace new technology, they love to acquire companies for the IP, but zero focus on R&D.
Management will throw you under the bus, even when they are not managing you!
Management is resistance to change, they talk with zero action and lack credibility. Most manager will listen, that is as far as it goes.

Advice to Senior Management

Stop talking, stop taking surveys and just execute. Noting speaks volume then "effective" action. Workers see though the hot air talks, also the surveys are so misleading because no one really believes they are anonymous. As a result "real" feelings between peers is not reflected in the survey management is seeing!