Novell Reviews

Pros

Good Work - Personal Life Balance
Management very supportive
Salary is decent
work place culture is good

Cons

Work is not technically challenging : mostly bug fixing
Lack of initiatives and ideas

Advice to Senior Management

Novell employs good Engineers.Good Engineers will work for more hours than they are paid for if they get challenging development opportunities.

Innovation is the result of undertaking challenging development work in core areas,
even if it might not be in compliance with the regular software engineering man-month-resource
algebra.

Pros

ethics, freedom and employee oriented policies

Cons

Management, compensation and challenging work

Advice to Senior Management

be proactive

Pros

Great Work-life balance
Unlimited sick leave :)
Talented People
Challenging Work
Cutting edge technologies
Team Outing

Cons

No proper direction
Unaware management
Decent pay but not standard to the competetitor

Pros

I love working with the people at Novell, particularly members of my own team. The new leadership gets that focusing on existing customers can be a great business and can also bridge the gap from old products to new.

Cons

As with all companies, there's more to do than can be done and lots of inefficiencies.

Advice to Senior Management

Keep it simple. Invest in the future.

Pros

There were a lot of good people that worked at Novell. They were a pioneer in the networking business a few years ago.

Cons

It was a good company to work for, but difficult to compete with Microsoft. They started to not be as competitive with the rest of the market.

Advice to Senior Management

It was a good company to work for, but difficult to compete with Microsoft. They started to not be as competitive with the rest of the market. Need to innovate more new products.

Pros

Strong brand, good people, some loyal customers. Novell has a long and storied past and a very broad product portfolio.

Cons

Novell has struggled for over a decade to regain relevance in the markets it serves. Despite several attempts, it has never competed effectively and was bought-out by private equity in 2011.

Expect aggressive management to the bottom line, not for growth, and a continued contraction of the business and headcount.

Pros

The salary and benefits are competitive for the local IT industry. Novell has a great culture and facilities (on-site fitness center, cafeteria, credit union, etc.) in Provo and offers a flexible work environment. The best part of working at Novell are the awesome people you get to work with every day and the many challenges and opportunities to help solve.

Cons

Novell was recently acquired by the Attachmate Group and this has naturally caused a sense of uncertainty among the ranks. The leadership and business culture brought into the fold by heritage Attachmate and NetIQ is less polished even though their focus on the customer and driving revenue is sound. Many, including myself, wonder if they are poised to grow the business or merely desire to "milk the cash cow" (existing customer base and maintenance revenue stream).

Advice to Senior Management

You have a great employee, partner and customer base at Novell. In order to keep the business in balance, you need to give adequate time, attention and priority to each.

Pros

You get great benefits and there are some great people to work with.

Cons

It's like pulling teeth to get a promotion or advance.

Advice to Senior Management

Listen to your employees and then you can know what they really want.

Pros

Dynamic industry, collaborative coworkers, good benefits

Cons

Leadership transitions, company is downsizing, spread thin.

Pros

Good collaboration
Management team who listened
Everyone cared

Cons

Very hard to change the world's perception of Novell
Too many products for our size