Research in Motion Reviews

Pros

good compensition. flexible work time to balance work and private life.

Cons

project team is too big to be efficient.

Advice to Senior Management

keeping a team relatively stable is better than making team members frequently transfer between teams.

Pros

good compensation
most of the employees are very intelligent people
good technologies
better work life balance compared to other companies

Cons

the upper management is very bad with respect to stratergies. The company came down in no time. They need to focus on aggressive marketing better strategy.

Advice to Senior Management

They need to focus on aggressive marketing better strategy to compete with Apple and google.

Pros

- Large company benefits package is good
- Good industry sector to work in
- Pay is OK
- Still some good people left

Cons

- Fallen on bad times and getting worse
- Blame culture / finger pointing
- Leadership in denial, no strategy
- Internal feuding out of control
- Far too "top heavy" no real career growth opportunities

Advice to Senior Management

Culling thousands of worker bees fixes this quarters problem but clearing out the morass of SVPs, VPs, Directors is probably the only way to save RIM. At the moment it's deckchairs on the Titanic.... Do something before somebody does it for you.

Pros

Interesting work
Talented Engineers
Acceptable pay and benefits

Cons

No opportunity for advancement unless you are from Scotland, Ireland or Celestica
If you work at RIM 8 - you will be micro managed
177 Executives with VP title or higher - Lots of silos
Cocky - we have no competition
Slow reaction to technology innovations
No processes - tribal mentality Co CEO - Co Chairmen same 2 guys - no checks and balances, one spent 3 years trying to buy a pro hockey team while his company tanked.

Advice to Senior Management

Communicate once in a while and get rid of some of the 177 millionaire executives with title of VP or higher. Stop micro managing and belittling your senior level employees. Promote from within and stop bringing in ex cronis from past relationships. Put up a suggestion box , you'd be surprised how many great ideas are within the RIM8 Fort Knox walls...

Pros

Not much actually. It doesn't really have good thing except it's salary is quite competitive within the industry. That's it

Cons

too much politics involved, and since it's saturated, not much to grow
people are too close, they don't will to share information
people are too busy for nothing.

Advice to Senior Management

Mike and Jim, start doing things man! Otherwise your company will be ruined! stand up and just do it o!

Pros

The company offers some good benefits, and also a flexible working environment in most positions, good work/life balance, opportunities to learn and develop and take external training courses.

Cons

Salaries are not competitive as other companies, a lot of cost optimisation measures introduced resulted in reducing headcount and putting projects on hold/scrapped. Future is somewhat uncertain, a lot of talented people are leaving or have left already for better paid and more challenging jobs. The company relies too much on processes, which introduce a lot of delays, and there's a lot of politics. Management are not up to the standard.

Advice to Senior Management

Needs to focus on retaining key talent by offering better opportunities and better salaries, and gain back the lost market to competitors by offering more innovating products rather than playing catch up.

Pros

The salary RIM pays is among the highest in the technology sector in Canada. It is a big and well-known company so having RIM work experience will be beneficial to your future job seeking. Depending on your job position, you either enjoy a stress free work environment or you will, not forced, but feel that overtime is a necessity in order to finish your tasks, this is especially evident if you work with radio stack. A lot of training courses provided by the company, though not available to co-op students, but you get to do them if you are a full time employee.

Cons

People get into the management position because of their seniority instead of technical competency. My team lead could hardly understand what we were talking about without repeating the material multiple times. Our technical lead was hardly of any help when we seek technical advises. She was always busy with something that we do not know about. She did not participate in email discussion much nor did she submit much of code anyways. Management did not know much of what their team members were doing either. During the last round of layoffs, they got rid of a couple of people who were working on some really important stuff yet kept a few incompetent people who did not do much but every time they do, they make a lot of noise to make sure everybody knows.

Advice to Senior Management

Get to know your employee, which one is good, which one is bad and which one is there that you must keep.

Pros

great people to work with
good office locations
casual work place
some opportunity to grow within the company
very intelligent people to work with

Cons

very different "rules" in different areas of the company, like finance and marketing are like 2 different companies
no communication from upper management
no clear path

Advice to Senior Management

treat employees with more respect. give more opportunities for people to grow into other roles.
communicate with employees. keeping silent won't make the problems go away

Pros

Yearly Raises and Bonus's were nice, when you received them, Salaries are very competitive, Benefits are pretty good.

Cons

It wasn't always easy to get time off when working shift work, Some people in higher up roles got their job by knowing someone not showing ability.

Advice to Senior Management

Communicate all changes to employees before they are implemented.

Pros

Easy to have work life balance.

Cons

Exec management is clueless about the Valley. As a result, it's hard to get things done.

Advice to Senior Management

Fire your entire legal team. They have no interest in the good of the company or in getting things done. They simply want to make sure you don't get sued.