Real Reviews

Pros

You can totally skate your way through the day. No one cares about anything innovative, which means it's not challenging. making it the perfect place for people who want to do a satisfactory job, and hit the bars or be home by 5:30.

Cons

Some of the best reasons are the downsides as well. There is nothing going on there. No technology, no new products, nothing cool. Marketing-wise, if you try to introduce something different or the least bit creative, it gets shot down. It's as if the executive team is riding this high and lofty balloon and don't care that thousands of other companies and products are zooming by.

Advice to Senior Management

Listen to their customers, the very few they have left, once in a while. And stop forcing them to use features/technology that they don't care about and pretend it's a benefit.

Pros

Cool people in product and technology teams, many good ideas; not always enough focus to get key things done. Leadership has waxed and waned - seems to be improving; company has made some smart moves that can indicate staying power

Cons

Worst Marketing on the planet. Hands down.

Advice to Senior Management

Really evaulate not only what people are telling you, but who is telling you what. Focus on doing a few things well.

Pros

Cool people, some cool projects, easy commute if you live north/south of Seattle

Cons

Horrible productivity tools, everything done "on the cheap", unwillingness by senior mgmt to be open in communication with employees, compensation below other local employers, stock price has been in the toilet for years with no sign of improvement

Advice to Senior Management

Treat employees as you would like to be treated, communicate more openly, stop being "penny wise and pound foolish" with compensation decisions, improve tools so that employees can be more productive, don't be afraid to try new things and make mistakes

Pros

The people here are really nice and the job is pretty challenging. The cafeteria is pretty hit and miss with really spicy food everyday but the soup is usually pretty good. Working on different projects is fun and the location in Belltown is pretty good too. The bowling alley downstairs is fun but I forget it's there half the time. My manager is pretty cool about scheduling meetings and understands when other things come up and we need to reschedule. Halloween around here is the best part and they really go all out with costumes, prizes, decorations all the works.

Cons

Management doesn't always tell you what is going on so you have to figure it out through other means. Deadlines are pretty tough and missing them is not an option. My manager is pretty good about balancing my schedule and doesn't have me punch the clock.

Advice to Senior Management

Can't think of much to tell them at this point.

Pros

Real networks is a company where you get good learning experience for people who want to move into management role.

Cons

Work is too stress full and no matter how much hard you push to get things done its is of no use. This is more a management driven company.

Advice to Senior Management

Try to retain employees and Implement a good working process

Pros

For me it was convince to home. Some perks like complete internet access, encouraged to use online tools and technology especially multimedia. casual work environment. some telecommuting options. Small in house gym and subsidized yoga classes. Location not bad, close to beltown and on the water front.

Cons

Little or no advancement or employee career development. Poor middle and upper management staff. no long range vision. Employees are not really treated as the asset they are especially the people that do the work. If you are not management you are not treated well and look as a comity. CEO out of touch with regular consumers, micro manages and surrounds himself with yes people. Somewhat poor infrasturce for support work such as calendar and email tools. Poor intranet.

Advice to Senior Management

Value your employees especially those that have seniority. Make a plan and stick to it for the long range instead of doing things for quarter to quarter earnings calls. Understand that the company is a small player and build back the reputation instead of blindly thinking your bigger then you are.

Pros

Great location and I met a lot of wonderful, bright and creative co-workers when I worked there. Good work-life balance. Great place to fly below the radar...get paid to do little (and plenty of people at Real do just that). Decent cafeteria and cool building.

Cons

Lots of reorgs - there were three in my department during the two years I worked there. It got tiring trying to figure out each new boss's vision and communication style.
The management in general is incompetent and chock full of poor communicators.
The company is not innovative and seems to recycle the same tired ideas that previously failed. It's always a year too late in launching products and websites of any interest and when they do, the marketing is so poor or non-existent, that they inevitably fail.
The senior management can't get the ship rolling in a positive direction mainly because the CEO believes it's his way or the highway.
People who are lazy but can grandstand get promoted.
As long as the department is making good numbers, management doesn't care if there are morale issues.
Pay is lower than what you'd make at another hi-tech company.
Turnover is high.

Advice to Senior Management

Communicate and treat your employees with respect. Make decisions based on what is right for the company rather than bending to the will of the CEO.

Pros

The manager I reported to was a bright and outstanding person to work for and absolutely worked their behind off - but was getting over worked, and was not supported by their VP. This manager built a dream team, and that was the most rewarding thing- was to be a part of a highly competent group of peers. We were on the same page and were very productive - plus we had fun doing it. So on the whole, there really were many bright folks working at Real - it was mostly a pleasure to be there because of that.

Cons

There is a general lack of process at Real - from most teams - and it seemed to be the way most preferred to run things, I believe because it made it easy to not be accountable. One would be hard-pressed to ever actually review a true marketing plan for any of Real's products - their marketing plans are mostly reactive, and not proactive. There are several products that Real should really either scrap or they need to spend time thinking about the viability of them & move on to something more compelling to the consumer. Finally, I found it frustrating and sad that the CEO announced that Real had record earnings in 2008, but then he laid off 7.5% of his staff.

Advice to Senior Management

I would NOT attribute integrity or appropriateness to the Senior Management. I think that the CEO surrounded himself with folks like himself, and it was not uncommon to be cursed at - very unprofessional. It would be refreshing to have management be forthcoming and upfront about their intentions. For instance, it was common to have the VP come and talk to our group, and not give us any information that we hadn't heard from other sources already - they were quite slow to communicate, and low on sincere praise.

Pros

Low expectations :)

Seriously, people here for the most part aren't slave drivers. Many of the middle managers have accepted their unhappy fate and are pretty liberal with time off, etc.

Cons

No "culture of excellence". Mediocrity is so ingrained in the culture here that there's a palpable malaise throughout the company. At its best, Real rewards motion over progress, and values working hard over working smart. That's at its best.

Advice to Senior Management

Uh, "do your job better"?

Pros

Most of the people at Real are nice people and many employees in the company are talented. So I would say co-workers are the best reason to work for Real. Real also has a good attitude about life/work balance and time off.

Cons

Real generally underpays by a lot. It is not a well managed company as a whole. Some business units are better managed than others though. The warm and fuzzy face of the corporate culture is deceiving, underneath it's a cutthroat political corporate culture especially at the management level and above. I prefer a REAL friendly place to work personally (pun intended), but I'd rather be in place that was openly cutthroat (like an investment bank or an oil company) so you at least always know where you stand and what to expect.

Advice to Senior Management

You get what you pay for... pay salaries at scale if you want to attract and keep talent. Software products need to be scrapped and re-written from scratch by developers who are paid what they are worth. The one exception may be the Helix Media server product... but the marketing of that has been incompetent at best.

As an example, Rhapsody 3.0 (pre acquisition/merger with Real) was a great product with fast performance and an elegant original look and feel needing only better mp3 player support. Rhapsody 4.0 (post merger with Real) has better mp3 player support ( still has a long ways to go though) but sucks in almost every other way. It now has the look of a bad ITunes wannabe (without many of the features and usability) and the CPU hogging heaviness of most of Real's other client side software products (RealPlayer comes immediately to mind).