Red Hat Reviews in Westford, MA

Current Employee – been working at Red Hat full-time for more than 8 years

Pros – Red Hat has strong company values, and a unique business model that makes it well positioned for success. It is a medium sized company with a big company presence

Cons – Office locations are far from city centers. I think this is a strategic move to keep real estate costs down, but I also believe it makes current employees unhappy and detracts against getting the "right kind" of new employees.

Advice to Senior Management – Expand closer to Boston to attract talent

Yes, I would recommend this company to a friend – I'm optimistic about the outlook for this company

Current Employee – been working at Red Hat for more than 7 years

Pros – Freedom to create.
You own your own career here, don't expect much hand holding.
significant majority of staff is dedicated and knowledgeable.
The company is engineered for remote employment throughout all departments.
Excellent hardware budgets
Reasonable total compensation for top performers

Cons – Process heavy in businesses that are cash cows
technical leadership a bit political
hyper growth companies are chaotic and Red Hat is no exception

Advice to Senior Management – Read Only the Paranoid Survive by Andrew Grove.

Yes, I would recommend this company to a friend – I'm optimistic about the outlook for this company

Current Employee – been working at Red Hat full-time for more than a year

Pros – A wealth of technical knowledge and a support org driven to do the right thing
Well known in tech circles

Cons – competing silos of messaging and strategy
hidden agendas of upper management
benefits are not competitive

Advice to Senior Management – Enable a real CMO ... agree and promote and message a strategy
Highlight the services and support org
Invest in sales

No, I would not recommend this company to a friend

Current Employee – been working at Red Hat full-time for more than 7 years

Pros – * Collaborative environment where you can work with very smart people
* Challenges you to evaluate and improve your own ideas to solve problems
* With not much effort you can interact with people across the company
* Opportunities for career enhancing training

Cons – * Like a small company, often struggling to do a lot with few resources or people
* Like a big company, starting to experience some drag from processes that haven't kept up with growth
* Some office-culture differences across certain geos can be challenging

Advice to Senior Management – More attention to preserving culture is needed; we have too little leadership in that area and too much lip service. However, upper management's improved focus on precise opportunities and strategy is a good thing overall and helps direct efforts across the company.

Yes, I would recommend this company to a friend – I'm optimistic about the outlook for this company

Current Employee – been working at Red Hat full-time for more than 3 years

Pros – Open source, still growing company, lots of opportunities, lots of offices, sex appeal in tech circles.

Cons – Red Hat has grown too fast and is becoming too much of a big company. If you are about to be laid off from HP or AMD, you will find yourself at home at Red Hat -- which is trying to become like HP or AMD. Red Hat lost its spirit of a smaller counter-culture company, and it's trying to impose (top-down) processes for operational efficiency. The open source developers who are still employed are less and less connected to the corporate entity which is all about process formality.

Advice to Senior Management – Red Hat can become AMD or HP in a few years, but look where those companies are today. Better to moderate the growth and upset the shareholders in the short term, rather than become a rigid corporation that Red Hat founders despised.

Yes, I would recommend this company to a friend – I'm optimistic about the outlook for this company

Current Employee – been working at Red Hat as an intern for less than a year

Pros – Extremely friendly and motivating people around who constantly push you to bring the best in you. You get lot of autonomy in work and learn a lot from its product suite.

Cons – Some processes get delayed like getting your h/w.

Advice to Senior Management – Senior management is doing a great job !

Yes, I would recommend this company to a friend – I'm optimistic about the outlook for this company

Current Employee – been working at Red Hat full-time for more than a year

Pros – Red Hat's open source culture creates a climate where associates' opinions are heard and people are encouraged to participate in decision making. In general, the staff at Red Hat is extremely bright and competant. Red Hat's management is supportive and respectful and they encourage an excellent work-life balance.

Cons – Red Hat's compensation and benefits package is not competitive with other high tech companies (at least in the Boston area, which is where I work). Associates are expected to "work for less" to have the privlege of working for the open source leader. There are many open source advocates who are willing to work for less, but this attitude will deter many excellent potential staff members from considering Red Hat.

Red Hat is also experiencing some growing pains with respect to processes and tools. Processes are extremely complex,. As we grow, these processes and tools will not scale. More streamlined processes need to be instituted to allow Red Hat to grow successfully. Thereis too much red tape and management approvals to be flexible and efficient.

Advice to Senior Management – Re-evaluate Red Hat's infrastructure and processes for growth. Red Hat must be more competitive and agile. There is too much management required to implement the complex processes which have evolved at Red Hat. The processes are so complicated that it takes several managers just to understand them and enforce them.

Does RH truly want to follow the path of Digital Equipment Corp ? DEC is the birthplace of most of the management expertise and processes within engineering. Red Hat shoulld consider a more agile development process, and bring in some new ideas to help with this
transition.

Yes, I would recommend this company to a friend

Current Employee – been working at Red Hat

Pros – Probably the most outstanding positive I can say about Red Hat is its commitment to Open Source technologies. Many of the people that work here and are happy working here succeed because they believe passionately in the idea of Open Source. Even though the company makes its profit from community-developed software, it adds many resources to that development and actively works with the community to create a meritocracy of ideas.

It is also a place where you'll find some of the best minds in the business. Great engineers work here and you are in great company when developing products and planning releases.

Red Hat is an international company that really does its best to let that personality flavor operations. Currently there are more associates employed outside the US than in the US. This means there is a great deal of work on an international scale, which can be engaging and exciting.

Cons – Because Red Hat hires some of the best minds in engineering, the atmosphere is one of the most egotistical and entitled in the business. The tone is one of having too many chefs in the kitchen. Projects can take ages to move along because there are too many experts. Personalities are constantly in battle. People openly judge each other based on ridiculous standard such as what OS's they prefer or what hardware they use.

The company spent many years as an engineer-only workforce, so much of the interfaces that have been designed for the 'public' are antiquated, outdated and (frankly) embarrassing. While the company is trying very hard to engage the Enterprise-leaning public with their technology, opinions from non-engineers are sometimes sneered at, misunderstood, or not taken seriously. This is exemplified in the fact that software developers have been hired for lead management positions in the Usability side of Red Hat.

The on-boarding and entry process is very confusing. There is very little of the technical and HR support that one is usually used to when starting at a company. You're left on your own when you start, and if you have a busy manager, you're even more in the dark. It takes a solid 2-3 months to get the basic gist of what's going on at Red Hat, and by that time you're expected to know every product inside and out.

When basic concepts about products and services are discussed, there are multiple contradictory answers provided from every realm of the company. It gives the associate the sense that no one is really at the helm of the ship.

Senior management really does do well to be vocal and to be available to people in the company. The open source 'way' more or less demands that there is open communication. However, when it comes to individual managers, it's anybody's guess what you'll get stuck with. There is little 'management of the mangers' so you can end up in a dictator's ivory tower with hardly any support to help you feel supported.

Advice to Senior Management – Leadership, while guiding the company well toward profits and secure market position, are risking losing their best workers because no one is helping them, no one is guiding them, and they're just left to feel inferior to the small, vocal minority of 'geniuses.' Some serious sensitivity training is needed amongst associates, with a heavy does of understanding toward new associates.

Keeping your suite of products so engineering-focused will not help the company grow. Look outside to the non-technical world who wants to take part in the Red Hat experience.

No, I would not recommend this company to a friend

Former Employee – worked at Red Hat

Pros – Great opportunities for learning, good benefits, great people!

Cons – It's easy to get lost in a place like RedHat. If you're a consultants you are expected to be 'on the road' nearly 100% of the time. If you go to work there and be a consultant expect to be living in cheap hotels and eating on a low end budget. You wouldn't believe some of the crummy hotels I had to stay at. Business travel is bad enough to begin with, fighting with a rat to keep yoru snickers bar in the hotel room is just too much on top!

Advice to Senior Management – Consultants are people too, with homes and families; understand the need for some balance between work and life.

Yes, I would recommend this company to a friend

Current Employee – been working at Red Hat

Pros – Good engineering staff. Friendly and easy going work environment.

Cons – Horrible, terrible, awful health benefits. Must be amongst the worst in the industry ..... if it isn't _the worst_.

Advice to Senior Management – FIX OUR DAMNED HEALTH BENEFITS.

Yes, I would recommend this company to a friend