Move Reviews

Pros

Good learning experience for new engineers

Cons

Pigeon hole not a lot of growth

Advice to Senior Management

Pay more

Pros

Good opportunity to make money
Great stepping stone for internet/technology sales
Normal 8 hour days
Competitive market advantage against competition

Cons

disrespectful managers
unethical behavior was encouraged and accepted
questionable results for customers
no back-end support for customers
changed sales compensation twice a year
used odd metrics to determine performance and pay

Advice to Senior Management

They need to use another method for determining quota for salespeople and create some sort of sense of stability. They constantly fired top performers because of dumb metrics based on previous years performance. Mediocre performers tended to do better in the long haul.

Pros

nice colleagues - fair wages, internet worked

Cons

mngmt was awful and disrespectful of employees

Pros

Move used to have many opportunities for web and software developers to learn new and emerging technologies, especially in the Microsoft realm, and on a prominent high-traffic website environment. It may still in specific favored groups.

Cons

CIO promises a "quality first" philosophy, but leads an environment that favors quick blue-sky promises and brittle low-quality code over experienced engineering that produces quality designs and systems.
The company's technology "replatforming" of 2009-2010 was performed by an engineering team completely new to the company's websites and needs, completely shut out all engineers who did know the existing systems and products. The result is a set of severely over-complex, expensive, very difficult to maintain systems that don't satisfy anyone's needs without a lot of frustrating hacking, but which management continues to advertise as the agile new platform.
Interoffice politics and management's refusal to recognize and address these problems continue to demoralize the working environment for many engineers, especially many loyal long-timers (some of whom have been with Move for 10-15 years) in the Westlake Village office, many of whom have left Move during 2010-2011. What remains is a terrible demoralizing working environment for engineers in the Westlake Village office, and disorganized chaos in the others.

Advice to Senior Management

Your people are your greatest and most irreplaceable resource, especially those who've been there working with your most core applications and products for several years, know everything that's not written down about the products and the systems, and know what's worked well or not well in the past and why. Treat your people as though they have the expertise that you or your predecessors hired them for (until they prove otherwise), and listen to them about both what to do technologically and what's wrong organizationally. Then you may have a chance of pulling the company out of its current plunge before the effects become as obvious outside the company as they are inside.

Pros

Flexible, medium sized company, leadership is investing in employee growth

Cons

Only 2 weeks vacation given for most positions

Pros

Get people - easy to work with, a collaborative group, peers love to bring in goodies (the best homemade cookies, cupcakes, and egg-rolls I've ever tasted), video games, team building, humorous and fun department to work in, smart & creative minds, definitely an eclectic group. There are a lot of opportunities to learn more about the real estate space with this company.

Cons

The commute from SF, constant top-down quick fixes and fires to put out parallel to the daily workflow, Ad overload, innovation and rich media design are encouraged - but rarely implemented, multiple "sign-off" levels in the approval process makes it tough for some great ideas to be launched before our competitors.

Advice to Senior Management

It's a tough task but, keep doing the best you can.

Pros

Move has a very relaxed environment, and generally works on alot of cutting edge technology.

Cons

Move works across multiple offices, and as much as they advertise geographic neutrality, the better more exciting projects have been moved, or will be moved to Northern California or Vancouver. Senior management does not show much respect anymore for engineers, and does not know how to motivate. Morale is at an all time low, which is disappointing because this company was once such a great place to work.

Advice to Senior Management

- Work on morale, not through words, but actions. People are not stupid, they know when they're getting fed a whole bunch of bull.
- Work on career growth. There is NO path or structure whatsoever for career growth. It is relatively arbitrary, you have to be in the right place at the right time. It is generally never experience or skill based.

Pros

The technical and institutional knowledge of the engineers is phenomenal. These are some of the most skilled and dedicated people I have ever worked with, and I have learned a lot during my tenure. Team cohesiveness among the Westlake Village office is fantastic.

Cons

Move's biggest problems are its inter-office politics, and the failure of executive management to rein this in, as well as the management's inability to actually implement the ideals it espouses. The result is a constant requirement to play "cover your [behind]" to make sure you cannot be blamed if project goes over schedule, as it inevitably does. Teams in other locations were also unwilling to listen to advice and/or constructive criticism, meaning that they had to invent the wheel all over again and learn the hard way. This happens repeatedly, and the executives continue to bury their heads in the sand.

Advice to Senior Management

When you have people who have been with the company for years and years, listen to what they have to tell you, because they've been through it before and can tell you why some initiative failed or had to be scrapped. It's not because they're "old dogs" who can't learn "new tricks"; they're trying to save you development cycles. Also, practice what you preach!

Pros

New management team, innovation is taken really seriously. I like the direction we are going in.

Cons

Benefits are a bit sparse - but the work is good and the Real Estate business is really exciting.

Advice to Senior Management

Continue to let the SMEs lead the way in their areas. Communicate plans to the leaders (below C-level) a bit better.

Pros

Casual. As satellite office, corporate culture is less stressful.

Cons

Forgotten by headquarters. Sold the division because of business focus consolidation.

Advice to Senior Management

Shouldn't have sold the division in Milwaukee.