Research in Motion Reviews in Kitchener, ON Area

Pros

Good opportunities and great compensation.

Cons

Waterloo is a small city.

Advice to Senior Management

Most managers are young and charismatic. They provide great feedback to employees.

Pros

The majority of coworkers were responsible and good people.

Cons

Managers were extremely ignorant.
Promotions were unfair and based on friendships.
Managers did not respect the employees.
Extremely stressful environment.

Advice to Senior Management

I think Research in Motion as a whole is like an immature arrogant kid who thinks it is better than any other company on earth. The only way to improve things is to choose managers based not only on their managing abilities, but also their KNOWLEDGE. People don't want to work under the supervision of STUPID managers.

Pros

Relaxing work culture

Flexible time

Developer teams are free to use latest and greatest technologies when applicable

Good benefits

A Blackberry for each employee

Cons

Management lacks of direction/determination

Reasonable but not competitive pay

No fun work environment (quite boring)

Lack of recognition on good work

High turnover rate

Advice to Senior Management

encourage, recognize and compensate for good work instead of playing the everyone-is-equal game.

stock option or some sort to make employee feel like being a real part of the company.

Pros

new technologies are being used you will be able to touch the leading edge techs and new product line up top sellers

Cons

too much politics, no focus on technology, lip job makes better performace than real job what makes conpany better position

Advice to Senior Management

focus on technology, don't just to be seconde hand info deallers, understand who is doing job and who is not

Pros

Freedom to complete work as the employee considers best.

Perks year round, occasional big event.

Environment encourages working closely with peers to solve problems.

You get a Blackberry.

Cons

They don't encourage work/life balance so your Blackberry allows them to send work related communication at all times of day.

Still has a small company mentality despite explosive growth resulting in inconsistent training of new hires. Business units feel like they are run as small fiefdoms without considering the greater overall goal of the company.

Recently added more layers of management to address lack of career advancement.

"Flexible" time, you are expected to adjust to whenever your manager is in. No working from home in this business unit.

Laziness of management, will willingly drag in entire department to weekly meetings to update project status instead of keeping themselves updated on what their subordinates are to be doing. Interaction between team members is already done on a more informal and efficient basis.

Project management training is available and highly encouraged, technical training has to be fought for. Expectation is to understand and learn new equipment without external training.

Ability to propose and implement new ideas is low.

Advice to Senior Management

Allow your lowest level of employees greater say in decisions, they may be new/untrained/etc. but the are the ones that hit the problems first. Take them more seriously and explain what the direction of the company/unit is. Allow them to actually suggest and implement ideas to pursue those goals.

Pros

- Use the latest and greatest technologies
- Top notch professionals from all disciplines and global organizations
- Fast paced projects
- Competitive pay

Cons

- Waterloo is a rather deserted location
- Communication can become difficult when EVERYBODY uses emails and RARELY engages you in-person

Advice to Senior Management

- Stop jumping on every single bandwagon. That can come later. Invest on projects that are truly innovative.
- Create a unique culture within RIM for the employees to be proud of
- Open up more entry-level positions to encourage Canadian university students

Pros

Flexible working hours
Good people to work with
Compelling work
Engineering driven company but changing

Cons

Upper management is undirected and scattered
Pay is sub par as compared to other tech companies
Decisions are beginning to be made with short sight in mind and no long term vision

Advice to Senior Management

Make proper engineering decisions and stop trying to follow. Learn to lead.

Pros

a lot of interesting tasks to do

Cons

everyone is really busy. sometimes it is hard to find people to respond to ur request

Advice to Senior Management

please spend more time to work with lower level collegues

Pros

good company with good pay

Cons

as an intern, I was kinda lost. I was not sure who i should report to. the job is not that chanlleging.

Advice to Senior Management

I think the management in research in motion is good overall. It depends on the job and position.
I am not a full time last year. I don't really have the right to judge.

Pros

- Dynamic company, exposure to leading-edge technology.
- Well known, strong name recognition, looks good on resume.
- Work on a good team full of bright people.
- Respect for work / life balance.

Cons

- Culture of tribal knowledge, need to absorb lots and lots of information that is not always clearly laid out, often for security reasons.
- To say that RIM is working hard to counter the threat from Apple and others would be a huge understatement. There is a strong sense of survival at stake, of needing to re-work the entire company culture.
- There are initiatives all over the place to improve internal tools and processes. Some will succeed and others will get downsized.
- There is a lot of uncertainty, but also lots of optimism and hope.

Advice to Senior Management

Don't get distracted by fluctuations in stock price, keep your eye on the ball. Keep what's good about the culture as you grow and develop new internal processes. Remember that process serves people, not the other way around.