Nuance Reviews

Pros

There is a friendly working atmosphere if you work in the right teams, but everyone works in their own silos.

Cons

This is a company that has grown massively over a short period of time and the management and job related skills of the managers havent kept pace with the growth of the company. If you can work on your own, then its a great company; but any manager who has been in the company for over 4 years tends to lack appropriate skills.

Advice to Senior Management

Invest in your staff and offer proper training - the Nuance University is a lazy cop out. Offer courses that the staff want, not online courses that are little use to anyone. Invest in real training with real trainers.

Pros

Great, talented people, good benefits. On the whole, I enjoyed working there. Depending on the individual manager, it was permitted to work remotely, which was great.

Cons

Not enough communication. You send an email, or leave a phone message, it goes into a black hole. This is true especially in the Burlington office.

Advice to Senior Management

Instead of buying up more and more companies, start investing in some R & D of your own. Create an environment that will attact the talented, inventive developers and engineers.

Pros

Nuance is a large company with broad reach that enables an employee to be exposed to a large number of technologies. Speech technology, in particular, is very exciting and constantly changing.

Cons

In my experience, a promotion is often simply a formality. Upon being promoted, there my may be little or no change in your responsibilities and little change in your compensation. Because of this, there is a high turnover rate of skilled technology professionals within the company, who feel they have no way to progress their careers at Nuance.

Advice to Senior Management

Implement more programs that encourage employees to go above and beyond, particularly the technology professionals. With these programs, I believe employees would feel much more appreciated.

Pros

Powerful company that demands excellence, and therefore results in personal and professional growth.

Cons

Huge company; can be somewhat rutheless in business endeavors.

Pros

Seattle office is great for work/life balance, people are awesome, work is steady and reliable, lots of opportunities to dig into technical problems.

Cons

Upper management employs the python method on each newly purchased company. Squeeze, squeeze, kill, eat.

Advice to Senior Management

Pay employees enough to keep them. Stop hold up innovation by refusing to allow new hires, fund R&D so they can do some R&D.

Pros

Smart people delivering interesting technical solutions to progressive clients worldwide

Cons

Too bad they cut back on the use of contractors

Pros

-Flexible work hours
-OK compensation
-Telecommuting
-Perfect place if you just want to spend 40 hours per week and collect an OK paycheck

Cons

-Limited vision, at least in the department I worked in
-Whatever vision they had, it is not communicated to the employees at all
-Not departmental leadership
-Again, no communication about company and department's goal and strategy whatsoever. The communication between my manager and me was just telling me what to do
-No investment at all to tools and education improve productivity

Advice to Senior Management

Employees are your most valuable assets and need to be treated as such.

Pros

Good benefits. Most peers very cooperative and great to work with. Interdepartmental cooperation was generally good.

Cons

Too much management interest in tracking the work and squeezing the employees, too little management energy focused on facilitating. People tend to keep their heads down and not make waves to avoid the wrath of management. Because of the tendency to manage by intimidation, the culture is so focused on work that people tend to seem anti-social and, as a result, it takes a while to feel like a member of the team.

Advice to Senior Management

You need to help management be more positive in general and more appreciative of their best employees. Morale always seemed poor.

Pros

Popcorn, Soda, flexibility in hours and humorous material provided by all levels of management. This will benefit my next career as a standup comic.

As a stock-holder, thumbs up. As an employee, read on ...

Cons

Right out of the gate, it’s all about the "flare". The company and management teams focus solely on making the product look good but not necessarily perform well. Management will cross any boundaries to ensure that Marketing deadlines are adhered to, including asking people to spin their wheels for the sake of spinning their wheels.

Executives and Board are focused solely on the short term stock prices, regardless of what they say. Almost any dip in quarterly numbers in the past 4-5 years, has been quickly followed up with a reduction in force.

Most middle managers are only focused on managing products and not people and offer very little communication because they really have nothing to communicate in regards to career or team building.

This is not a place for the weak-hearted. If its just a stop-over to the next opportunity then probably worth the pain.

Advice to Senior Management

Keep in mind that there are many many smart, hardworking worker-bees in this company that will be leaving shortly. If career advancement is only available at the top levels, your workers will seek career advancement elsewhere.

If you really believe its just a few sour grapes, try opening your door and walking the floors for a while.

Pros

Great benefits package.
Good PTO benefits.

Cons

I can only speak for the Healthcare side of Nuance.
Very poor compensation or communication to or for the little folks in the company. Nuance expects a lot and gives little. Every employee especially those below 'upper management' status are expendable.
It is all about who you know and how favored you are by your direct manager that determines your growth potential. Experience, knowledge or ability is not a factor in continued employment or growth. There is no margin for being human. No encouragement to 'think outside the box'...no individual recognition for a job well done. You only hear from upper management when something goes wrong.
Nuance tends to bury employees who actually know something and promote those who do not, again, dependant on who knows and/or likes who, especially those below the 'upper management' level. Those who think differently or manage differently do not last long at Nuance despite doing a great job in their current position.

Advice to Senior Management

Draw from the talent resources already on board with the company, i.e., promote from within based on performance and knowledge, not lettering following the name.