NIKSUN Reviews

Pros

Developers will work like dogs for you

Cons

Upper management has absolutely no technical competence whatsoever. They are absolutely paranoid, schizophrenic and bipolar. They constantly complain about how miserable their lives are and take it out on their employees.

Advice to Senior Management

Treat your CEO with more respect.

Pros

The title says it all, if you know your stuff, there are unlimited opportunities. The reason people leave so often is that they can't handle the work. But the smart employees are rewarded well.

Cons

Morale is low and employees should be happier, but work must be done and releases are delayed which piles on extra work fixing bugs made by employees.

Advice to Senior Management

Like some other reviews on this site, motivation is key. Perhaps some team building days and morale boosting activities and events.

Pros

NIKSUN engineers are fun to be around and really smart. The (at the time new) office is also in a really nice location which is close to a great mall and some nice restaurants. The technology is also excellent and I enjoy what I did there.

Cons

Unfortunately, what people say is true, the work was and probably still is heavy. I have seen errors with code which may call for micromanaging but it got a bit excessive.

Advice to Senior Management

Hire more people to ease the workload off of the engineers perhaps? Also, the communication between sales and engineering was minimal if existant at all, that could be improved.

Pros

This technology is amazing. I am with some insanely smart people and everyone is communicative. The location is also very nice as well.

Cons

Too. Much. Work. Simply put, the employees are overworked and management needs to understand this. While I do understand that this is often due to people not making decisions for themselves and solving their own problems, the work is often stressful. I just dislike working late nights and weekends. Cannot make my work life my only life.

Advice to Senior Management

Please ease up on the workload and please understand that we do make mistakes. It seems as if you feel that we should be perfect, when we can't be. We are only human after all!

Pros

First of all, to respond to people saying that managers treat people like dogs and micromanage, here's the other point of view, as there are always two sides to a story. The simple fact is that several employees can be incompetent and simply need to be micromanaged. How can we run effective teams if an employee is making a mistake here and there? Often code is hard to understand and therefore we simply need to micromanage. If you want to have more freedom, do your job, and do it well, please! We try to be friendly and welcoming but when work isn't done and releases are delayed because of lack of productivity we simply must take action.

That being said, NIKSUN is a good place to work in terms of the core architecture. It's much more than what people describe as "Taking free software like Redhat, Wireshark, etc and attaching it to a custom database and front end". People wouldn't buy it if it was that simple. If it was, would we not all be billionaires with our own Network Security corporations? I am tired of this complaining, as other reviews are constantly attacking the company when they don't know that it's actually a good place to work.

Cons

That being said, I do understand that there is a lot of work to be done and it often requires us to ask you to come in late. This is true, but if we all worked smarter rather than harder this would not be the case.

Advice to Senior Management

I think management should improve morale and try and get the employees motivated in order to remove these skewed perspectives of the company.

Pros

Some very smart people, quiet office usually, very friendly employees. Office with windows and large desks. Located near a mall with plenty of restaurants and shopping while on lunch break.

Cons

Owner frequently sends emails degrading employees. Asked to work on the weekends frequently around 4:30 on Friday afternoons. In fact a lot of people put in 10 to 12 hour days regularly. Code reviews are a joke, someone stands over your shoulder to review the code before you check it in. Very little transparency about what is going on with the company. Expected to take laptop home every night and on the weekends.

Advice to Senior Management

Need to have a smoother process to reach out to people, name tags on desks wouldnt hurt. Asking someone to work on the weekends without advance notice, because a project manager wants a feature is not fair, hire more developers if you have that much work. Morale is at an all time low, the CEO doesn't even send an email wishing everyone a merry Christmas, he just complains he doesn't get enough time off. He thinks every one slacking off except for himself.

Pros

Work with latest technology
Work along side intelligent co-workers
Influencial senior management

Cons

Professional development such as job performance feedback & resources for furthering education
Lack of motivation by many co-workers

Advice to Senior Management

Allow work from home!
Host company events such as 5k or adventure weekend in order to build company cohesion

Pros

- Paid time off for holidays, sick and personal days.
- Great working environment in terms of the office itself and co-workers.
- Cutting edge technologies to develop.
- Nice location in Princeton with plenty of places to eat.

Cons

- Come in late and work late schedule for most employees.
- No set work-from-home days.
- Some projects can crop up last-minute and require longer days to complete.

Advice to Senior Management

We're only human - stop working us so hard. The work is interesting but very hard. Also please allow for work-from-home days because some employees live very far.

Pros

I would have to say that overall this company is doing a good job. The pay is competitive, the benefits are good, and the work is very interesting. I handle quotes from Sales Reps and see all of the big names as clients. I also have my own project that I am leading and it's nice to have my own innovation applied into this project.

Cons

The Hours are LONG. If you come to work here, expect a challenge and working until 7 or 8 at night some days. That being said, the word is very rewarding, but really you have to be very smart to deal with management, as they are very smart and if you aren't you won't be able to keep pace with them.

Advice to Senior Management

We can't all be as smart as the CEO, so please treat us as normal people and ease back on the hours. I guess long hours are expected with a medium sized company still growing...

Pros

The technology is very interesting and the work is enjoyable. Dr. Pruthi even buys gifts when you do a good job and the pay is competitive. When we are working late management will treat us to dinner and stay with us so we know that they're here for us.

Cons

The work level is a bit hard, as a small company they need people to put in more hours and sometimes come in on weekends.

Advice to Senior Management

Management is good but they really need to ease up on the workload, it's like I'm working two jobs almost. But overall it's a good experience. They really just need to hire more people so everyone isn't working late so often.