Polycom Reviews

Pros

Work is the best part, very good technical work. Pay is good. Work-life balance is good and mostly you can get off whenever you require for personal stuffs. Good office and facilities and overall great professional environment and good minds around.

Cons

Benefits needs to improve , lot of disparity in benefits between US and APAC offices(not pay). Maybe increase in future as Polycom is diverting its attention to booming Asian videoconferencing market.
Some Financial policies are bad and needs to do away with immedietely.
Communication gap between workforce and upper management

Advice to Senior Management

NA

Pros

Very relaxing company culture, laid back

Cons

good for sales ppl, very few investment in mid/back office

Pros

Revenue growth, large market share

Cons

Senior management is very aggressive and unpredictable - good for challenging the competition but bad for employees and morale.

Pros

Overall, good place where people are treated fairly
Benefits are good.
Products are exciting and challenging.
Video space overall is hot.

Cons

2010 Senior Management Change is driving a LOT of churn.
CEO is mercurial
Jobs are moving to India
Cisco becoming competitive so long-term risk

Advice to Senior Management

Stop the churn of execs! Strategy of software is confusing. Need to help rank and file understand why this strategy is going to be successful.

Pros

They did find a good team to work with.

Cons

They opened a new office, explained how it would excell, how everything was in place for us to do some great selling but once started we got

0 support from Management
Terrible equipment to work on
A office that had elevators that got stuck, phones that went dead, internet that would cut out
No call lists to try and generate business (We resorted to phone books)

After 4 months of this, after pulling a number of people from excellent jobs with big promises they simply let the team go and shut down operation!

Advice to Senior Management

Employee's are humans with family's. Complete disgrace in my opinion.

Pros

office is reasonable warm and dry.
money was paid in time.
there is a bus stop in front of the building.
huge parking slot.
nice guys at the reception (contractors)
Monday night football (own expense) is great fun.

Cons

no career pass,
dishonesty, (they can´t differentiate between hiding and lying.)
numbers are screwed up all the time.
no sales environment.
foreigners are misused as language puppets in slough.
management think that polycom has no open door policy,
no work balance.
I couldn't discover any work ethics (may be they are there but they are well hidden.)
I doubt that even the management aside from AM believes in the polycom messaging,

Advice to Senior Management

hopeless task, as they are not interested.

Pros

-Compensation
-Great Technology
-Fantastic Tools to get your job done
-Week off between Christmas and New Years
-First line managers are given the tools to communicate company messages effectively

Cons

- Never really allowed to get a day off without working.
-Stock price has suffered due to the lack of effective Senior management.
-Compensation

Advice to Senior Management

The new management seems to understand the business and I look forward to seeing what we can do in the coming year

Pros

Good salary, good image, good products

Cons

Rude management, job description that can change overnight just for a manager change

Advice to Senior Management

Retain your good employees!

Pros

Growing Company, Stock is doing great but may hit compition very soon

Cons

No Personal Growth for existing employees

Advice to Senior Management

None - They know the best :-)

Pros

Great benefits package is available for employees and it isn't too unreasonably priced. There is some flexibility to work from home and to have corporate network access at home to use products in the home office more effectively.

Cons

Management has taken great lengths to insulate themselves from the realities of day to day activities which leads to decisions being made in a vacuum. People on the front line are treated as expendable resources with no commitment or loyalty to the employee but the company demands unquestioning loyalty from the employees. Management is always preaching to desire to make Polycom one of the top ten places to work but they will never act on any of the necessary changes if they cost more than a couple dollars per employee to implement. Management doesn't put forth any effort to effectively communicate the company vision and direction to employees. Employees are treated as potential leaks instead of sharing all the information they need to do their jobs and plan effectively for the future growth of the company. Anytime there is even a slight downturn in quarterly numbers senior management always seem to choose to cut head count rather than accept that sometimes things are just tough. The cuts always happen in the dark with employees learning about them via the grapevine and no details about who you should work with when someone you relied on is suddenly gone. The company seems to rely heavily on forcing employees to burn vacation time to help improve the balance sheet with little consideration of the potential impact to the business and absolutely no consideration of the impact to morale. Employee morale is horrendously low already and every time a head count reduction occurs or a forced PTO occurs it further impacts morale. Management pretends to listen to employees during the all-hands meetings and occasional town-hall style meetings but they never follow up on any of the comments or concerns from employees so it becomes clear that they either don't really care or just don't want to commit any time to following up with employees.

Advice to Senior Management

Spend more time listening to your employees and making them a part of the decisions. If you feel that a decision has to be made quickly then you need to consider why that is the case. If you can't involve employees then you need to spend the time to communicate to employees why they weren't involved and how the changes will really affect the employees. Don't assume that the information will be disseminated down to the front line because you've purposefully placed middle managers and VP's into positions where they choose to block that communication. If you aren't going to put any real effort into making Polycom a top place to work then please stop talking about it or admit that aren't going to put any time or money into doing so. If you want to retain the truly great employees and recruit more of them you have to put your money where your mouth is and do right by the employee. If you force PTO you need to recognize that a C level, VP or senior manager is going to have a greater impact on the company's bottom line than a front line worker. Admit to employees that these people will be taking time because it does have a greater impact. If you want to reduce expenses then ask the average employee to offer suggestions and really listen to what they have to say instead of just doing them lip service. Be leaders, not tyrants.