Red Hat Reviews in Raleigh-Durham, NC Area

Pros

Collaborative atmosphere for every position, value of family as the first priority in life, opportunity to affect the direction of the company from every level.

Cons

Formal internal training program is not quite mature yet so you have to constantly be on the lookout for outside opportunities of to develop yourself.

Pros

You really are a part of something at Red Hat and everyone is very passionate about their work.

Cons

There is no work life ballance and the company is very understaffed. There is so much work to do and everyone works a ton of hours.

Advice to Senior Management

Show some respect to the worker bees and get on board with more work life ballance.

Pros

Red Hat is full of some of the smartest people in the industry who are very passionate about their work. Its a great place to learn and to get a lot of excellent experience.

Cons

Pay is a bit low. I received a 33% raise when I left RHT.

Advice to Senior Management

Stock is great, but higher salary is better.

Pros

Self motivated and a lot of freedom

Cons

Team work needs to be improved

Advice to Senior Management

Senior manager should care more about employees

Pros

Easy/Laid back office climate.
A lack of formality and excessive rules.
Company has been growing throughout the recession & always has vacancies.
People here are generally positive.

Cons

Much of your experience & opinion of this company will depend on which part of Red Hat you work in as some parts can feel like you are working in any one of a million other non-special & so-so companies, while others are more like working in an evangelical church/cult (mostly in a positive way).

While the company likes to promote how different and progressive they are, sadly, they permit and suffer from all the same negative things that other companies do, such as:

Politics
Neopotism
Fiefdoms
Disconnection
Penny pinching

There is a annoyingly steady & largely pointless proliferation of slogans, project names, department names and job titles that will make your head spin and buzz if you work here.
Most don't make any sense or are very fancy & "new age" ways of saying those existing and well established functions.

Then there is a constant "air of change" which the compay beleives is good for their business, but the company doesn't understand the serious implications of constant change nor that while change, a lack of boundaries and a lack of structure is a good thing in certain departments (e.g. software dev), it is a complete disaster in others.

In addition, there are staff who still behave and function as if the company was being run out of a garage.
Red Hat is supposed to be a global compay but it hasn't really understood what this means, yet, nor properly reflected this in its systems, procedures, policies and attitudes.

There is a lot of disconnection between departments and groups and often, different groups of people are working on the same of similar areas or problems, oblivious to the efforts of others.
This leads to obvious wasted time, effort and money and which creates exasperation & a deflating effect on staff, often cumulatively.

The number of projects I have been part of and which are now gathering dust is depressing.

Red Hat is cheap and also, cheap when it doesn't need to be or where it doesn't makes sense to be.
But then it squanders lots of money on assinine consultations and ill thought out ideas, concepts and projects and which often forget or ignore basic and elemetary aspects, while the trendy and new ideas of X are given far too much weight.

Red Hat does not hire enough staff for their needs and so people are overworked and heavy demands are placed on their time. Ultimately, this leads to poor performance and people leaving.
I think the slogan "Penny wise and pound foolish" fits this company very, very well.

It pains me to write this honest review as the company has, at heart, well intentioned ideas, products and aims and the spirit/ethos of a lot of people here is refreshing & exhilarating.
They can become a great company if they play their game right, which at the moment they are not.

The free bagels donuts & snacks don't make up for a laundry list of shortcomings however, which the company has to resolve if it wants to go much further.

Advice to Senior Management

Make the necessary decisions and provide funds to deal with the structural issues.
Kill the politics
Start compensating staff in line with your demands.
Improve health benefits

Pros

High paced sales environment that is challenging.
Named brand recgonition and with growing market share
Competitive Salary
Growing partner base
Motivated sales reps

Cons

Mid Management has little to no power and cannot make any real decisions
Management's perceptions usually do not equate to reality although that is what our fearless leader seems to instill in his mid management.
Promotions are rare and our commission structure is cleverly designed to allow you to make less money that what you actually sell.(single year bookings????) It's a joke.
Poor benefits package
Less flexibilty than other companies seem to have.

Favoratism runs high in this department but I guess that's the same everywhere you go. However, some of the awards and promoitions are OBVIOUS products of favoritism and it seems if you want to get any where you have to kiss up hardcore, be a navy alumi, or come from IBM.

Advice to Senior Management

If you want to hire top talent then stop treating your employees like entry level staff. It seems that Red Hat is great place to work in terms of flexibility, openess, and growth.

However, the sales department does not fit this perception and I believe it is a result of our management and there way of thinking.

Pros

Great place to work, where the culture is open, friendly, and ready to work hard to get the job done. Nice that it has a casual dress code and many open discussions.

Cons

There aren't a lot of women in high up leadership positions, especially on the sales side. Can feel like the good ol boys club sometimes, when almost all of the upper management are men driving their fancy cars and owning multiple homes, but I guess that's corporate America for you!

Advice to Senior Management

Would love to see my charitable activities going on. Instead of just writing a big check every year, bringing the employees together to run charity races, or work on Habitat for Humanity is a much better way to give back and boost employee morale at the same time.

Pros

You get to work with awesome people (for the most part), and you get to do work that's interesting. A lot of respect for intelligent people, and you're encouraged to work on your own project ideas.

Cons

Can be mentally exhausting. Hard to not work 70 hour weeks. Always pressure to be bigger, better, more, greater. No work-life balance allowed.

Advice to Senior Management

Find ways to offer work-life balance. Quit hiring idiots, or at least don't let those idiots hire even more idiots.

Pros

Culture drives proactive, results-driven behavior. Focus on independent actions and individual accountability. Reasonably flexible work environment.

Cons

Need fresh blood esp in management. "Old Guard" is suffocating and has lead to nepotism.
Change is slow coming and hard won.
For a still small-ish company, compared to competitors like Oracle, MSFT, and IBM, the politics are astounding.
Poor, ineffective managers are allowed to continue in their rolls without being replaced or re-trained.

Advice to Senior Management

Invest in hiring and training great managers, they make (or break) the employment experience!

Pros

Red Hat is still a growing company. Though not in full start up mode any longer, it still maintains the sense of entrepreneurial-ship prevalent at most startups. However, it also has enough process in place to prevent total chaos.

Cons

The same reason that makes it a pro can also make it a con. As a company grows, the ecosystem has to adjust to change, and many times those changes can be challenging.

Advice to Senior Management

Rely on the expertise that you have hired from the industry and lean on it to make the important and critical decision to keep the company growing and moving forward.