NetApp Reviews

Current Employee – been working at NetApp

Pros – - chanllenging work
- good appreciation

Cons – - salary is not competent

Yes, I would recommend this company to a friend

Current Employee – been working at NetApp

Pros – Pay, benefits, lots of talent, best standalone storage company

Cons – Some of the old guard inner circle need to go, not even sure what most of them are accountable for. Dan needs to retire and take some with him, they don't need the money and aren't providing commensurate leadership. Getting more political.. Salary compression due to so many senior engineers. New rating system trying to address, but not working. A lot of folks resting while vesting. You have to be on the "inner circle" to advance your career. How long is it going to take to fix supply chain? HR team is weak.

Yes, I would recommend this company to a friend

Former Employee – worked at NetApp

Pros – 1. Great sr. execs. Old school and solid.
2. Good (but not great) compensation
3. Work/Life balance

Cons – 1. The group that I was in, was not the main line of business. Thus get very little recognition.
2. Stable but booooring. I left because I was bored.
3. Some level of politicking. Not bad compared to other places.

Advice to Senior Management – 1. Be more innovative and branch out to other areas beside enterprise storage. Try new stuff.

Yes, I would recommend this company to a friend

Current Employee – been working at NetApp

Pros – Executive time spent with employees - talking, acknowledging accomplishments, answering questions, explaining, exciting. Compensation is good, and stock performance has been very good in recent years. Some of the engineers are world class.

Cons – As the company is in the throws of adolescence, it struggles to cross the gap between the mantra of a new company "do whatever we can as quickly as possible" and one of a more mature company "ensure our platforms - IT, process, etc. - can sustain growth without sacrificing quality, time to market, and flexibility."

Advice to Senior Management – identify leaders who are abusive, and help them address their issues, or help them out of the company. Follow feedback ratings to find those bad apples in management.

Yes, I would recommend this company to a friend

Current Employee – been working at NetApp

Pros – Fortune Top 100 Places to Work

Cons – Over emphasis on the branding of Fortune Top 100 Places to Work

Yes, I would recommend this company to a friend

Current Employee – been working at NetApp

Pros – it has big company perks

Cons – its got too much work

Former Employee – worked at NetApp

Pros – Open "cube culture" where even the top execs have cubes instead of offices. And frequent "all-hands" where execs address employees directly and in-person.
Perks like company gym, bagel Friday, and monthly beer bash help to boost moral.

Cons – Single product company with life-cycles so long that your children might someday see the feature you were working on. Some of the process tools used are OK, but many are so bad they are preventing a significant amount of work from being done (ex: QC). I really do not know how long NetApp can sustain this. I was so glad to go to a place where I work on something and ship it in the same few months. At NetApp, the product I worked on for almost two years finally shipped 6 months after I left.

The performance review process is to me completely unreasonable. 60% of all employees are given a "3" rating which basically means you get to keep your job. If you're lucky you get a cost-of-living raise. The top 30% or so get higher raises, and the bottom 10% better start looking for another job. The big problem is that this is "rolled up" through the company hierarchy, so people deciding your rating could be 2 or 3 levels above you who no way know your work. Since I was a manager, I had to opportunity to see how this worked, and I saw many instances of gross unfairness. Some other manager could be a better cheerleader to his boss than me, so my tight, productive testing team with great engineers would get the low ratings, and a bloated team that contributes much less would steal the 1s and 2s.

Advice to Senior Management – There are poor middle managers throughout NetApp who are contributing to suffocating processes that makes it no fun for an engineer to work. You reward engineers who fill out wiki pages all day and punish those who actually are writing code. You are losing your best engineers at an astonishing rate. There are addressable reasons why this is happening, and pretty easy solutions to some of them.

No, I would not recommend this company to a friend

Current Employee – been working at NetApp

Pros – Nice money package. Good work culture and excellent people around you. Management is very communicative about all news floating inside and outside company. Transparent communication across employee level.

Cons – Internal politics happen during promotions or giving bonus package to employee. Promotions not happening at right time is sometime annoying. That can help some good people to stay in firm for longer tenure.

Advice to Senior Management – Promotions at right time for right individuals will motivate people to stay for longer period. I like transparent communication across board in NetApp. Few people really set great example in company. Please keep such good work going.

Yes, I would recommend this company to a friend

Current Employee – been working at NetApp

Pros – The company culture supports good effort and ethic.

Cons – Slackers do not last long.

Yes, I would recommend this company to a friend

Former Employee – worked at NetApp

Pros – convenient to home easy commute

Cons – management is bureaucratic and insular

Advice to Senior Management – This company is mainly run for the benefit of the top management and the board which has a lot of stock options.

No, I would not recommend this company to a friend