Perceptive Software Reviews

Pros

The people
Growing company
Great if you've never worked anywhere else
Free lunch if you're on a budget and are patient, or if you're in Dev

Cons

Too many politics
Too long making hiring and other important decisions
Resentment over options lingers among worker bees
Inconsistent management
Nepotism

Advice to Senior Management

Leaders need to communicate changes effectively, thoroughly and early. Morale has suffered because of inconsistent communication. Who are we trying to be? Lots of confusion around small and agile - which few really believe any more - versus big, bad industry leader. Pick a lane. Bring in people with more experience. Budget for it. Salaries do not match market.

Pros

Awesome company culture (e.g. internal and external dodge ball tournament)

Cons

Going through some growing pains

Pros

Positive environment
Place for growth and learning
Competitive pay
Flex scheduling
Better than the many other places I have worked in my life. I don't understand the hate some people who are no longer here show. Just grow up and move on like I have done with prior employers.

Cons

My fat butt can't get up speed on the slide. Seriously I really like it here and haven't found a lot of cons. You are learning their program so your skills don't transfer to other places really well.

Pros

Growing company with lots of opportunities for professional growth.

Cons

Very intense fast paced environment that doesn't always allow for work life balance.

Pros

- Free lunches
- Free diet coke
- Camaraderie among the worker bee's
- Free t-shirts
- Success in the Corporate Challenge
- Gave me exposure to look elsewhere within the industry

Cons

Management has been promoted or hired despite being qualified. There is a level of nepotism going on within the organization with a Director reporting to her Executive cousin. Everyone is aware of this, but yet says nothing despite multiple complaints by subordinates and unfair favoritism. In addition, VPs have been brought in because of their friendships with the CEO despite a lack of qualifications, while those who are qualified in experience and tenure are pushed to the corner and told to "be quiet". I think Perceptive could do well, but they (as all others have said) have experienced tremendous growth while lacking strong, solid leadership. In my opinion, an engineer (most often) lacks leadership training essential for building and maintaining cohesive organizations.

Advice to Senior Management

The attrition rates at Perceptive continue to increase and many who leave are running to Hyland or Archer RSA. To me, it seems somewhat embarassing to have to host an open house in the economy that we are in, just to get candidates. Perhaps, the reputation is catching up to you. Open your eyes. Conduct an analysis with an external firm, not Perceptive's HR. Recognize the strong employees that you have inside your four walls and remove the executives/directors/VPs that are not qualified and not contributing. They are only contributing to the decreased morale among your strongest contributors, your worker bee's.

Pros

First, the company has a rare, innovative and flexible time-off policy (no official time tracking). Second, compensation is fair and benefits are excellent. Third, there is the near-guarantee of proper investment and continuing growth (particularly internationally) following the company's acquisition by Lexmark. Fourth, opportunities for learning about the company's particular area of technology (enterprise content management) are abundant.

Cons

The good ideas, determination, and hard work of the company's founders bred a critical mass of success. Success bred rapid growth. Growth bred the typical creeping bureaucracy, with more layers of management, more meetings, less direct involvement between the founders and typical staff members, and less overall agility. The company's acquisition by a larger firm has only accelerated these trends, as distant executives increasingly exert control over aspects of daily life that used to be taken for granted, such as a highly responsive, locally minded employee-tech-support organization that is merging with the mothership and losing the personal touch it once had. Acquisition was not supposed to change the company's laid-back culture or local customs, but there's no doubt it has started to happen and will likely continue. If you are comfortable with a corporate feel and a growing sense of subsidiary-ization, Perceptive can still be a rewarding place to work. But those who recall a more improvisational, startup-oriented environment, heavily laden with the personalities of the founders and the hustle of underdogs, will find much has changed. I suspect it's just a matter of time before those who created this enterprise will move on to other challenges or retire to their well-deserved yachts or second homes.

Advice to Senior Management

To those who started this company, it would be great to see you roll the dice and start a new enterprise after you fulfill your current obligations. You were superb at building something from nothing, and could undoubtedly do it again.

Pros

Great building.
Decent perks.
Free breakfast.
Lots of parties.
The product has lots of potential. Very talented engineers. Development process works.

Cons

As the management structure grew, the political nature of the job grew faster. I've heard people in middle management discuss political maneuvering to get their way, from not having their cubes near certain people to making sure the "right" people get promoted. On top of this, some managers are so busy trying to be self important its almost sickening.

Advice to Senior Management

Find some way to curb the politics. Bring the whole company together under a better unified vision. A lot of work was done to make the "initiatives" important, but they didn't convey the vision senior management had for where they wanted to see our company (besides from a financial standpoint).

Pros

Events
Free breakfast
Comfortable building
Ok salary
Smarter than average co-workers, though that doesn't apply to managment

Cons

Lack of vision at the mid-management level
Rewarding a 'status quo' mindset
Yes-men environment
Technologically backward in many departments
Good ideas go to management meetings to die
Health insurance co-pays were terrible
The lack of time-tracking really became just an exercise in management awarding time off to their favorites. Beware, that policy can and was used improperly.

Advice to Senior Management

Manage by committee. You'd be better off. Trust the wisdom of the masses. Non-management staff have better ideas than you do. It's clear you're just trying to stay under the radar of top-level management, and your short-sighted, corporate-speak goals show it.

Pros

decent place for a first job as part of resume building. don't expect a career path though

Cons

limited advancement opportunities

management oblivious to employee sentiments

no loyalty to employees

VP and Directors are preoccupied spending their windfall from the Lexmark buyout and not seeing ,or not caring, about the desertions to competitors.

outsourcing tech jobs to India or the Philippines

Advice to Senior Management

when are you going to recognize that the crew is abandoning the ship?

how many long-term employees need to leave - going to Hyland Software or RSA Archer - before you stat asking why?

how many quarters of falling short of revenue goals will you allow before you listen to the marketplace and what your employees are reporting to you?

Pros

- Great product that has a promising future.
- Nice building.
- Good benefits, although the 401k plan is lacking.
- Talented employees who are fun to work with.
- Lots of perks (full-sized gym, dodgeball court, massages, exercise classes, free lunches on some days).

Cons

- Salaries are lower compared to similar jobs in the industry, although this is changing somewhat now that Lexmark owns the company.
- No bonuses (in any department in Technical Services)
- Management likes to pick favorites. You will often see employees get rewarded for responding to emails quickly and making unrealistic promises to customers. The ones actually doing the problem solving and legwork don't get noticed as much.
- Poor communication between departments. Nearly everything is mentioned over email or said in meetings. There isn't a good content management system to store internal information and search on it.
- The entire company uses Lotus Notes for e-mail and their calendar, which is slow, buggy, and crashes often. Management has discussed moving to Gmail and Google Calendar, which would be nice.

Advice to Senior Management

Get a decent content management system. If you have a question about an internal process you usually have to search through your e-mail or ask someone else. There is little opportunity to move up in the company, and since there are no bonuses, employees don't have much of an incentive to work harder. Start rewarding employees for being productive.