Rovi Corporation Reviews

Pros

They have excellent benefits and you may find yourself working with some very smart colleagues. Most of the offices are nice.

Cons

The IT department is 90% useless.
Some of their business units seem stuck on dying or iffy technologies and markets.

Advice to Senior Management

Not all employees went to business school, Fred: Tone down the obscure acronyms in the all-hands presentations, please, in the interest of better communication.

Pros

Compensation is generally competitive and they have a competitive benefits plan.

Cons

It's not managed very well. Very disorganized place. They went through multiple rounds of layoffs and didn't handle them well. They also bought several companies and either gutted their products or the personnel or both and then either sold them off or more usually shut them down.

Advice to Senior Management

Treat the people who work for you as partners not employees. Treat your partners as valuable extensions of your employees. Treat your customers like they are your family you care about.

Pros

This company is evolving quite a bit in the last year with good solid plans for change in the next couple of years. It is small enough (1,100 people)that you can have an impact on actions within the company, but large enough that there are real processes in place that are effective in many ways. The technology is very interesting and a lot is driven by smart Product Management team that is truely out in the field assessing the needs. The stock price is going up, slowly but up in a market when other company's are laying off, you can not beat that.

Cons

Needs a bit of a makeover of the culture to be a bit more hip

Advice to Senior Management

listen more, move a little quicker to change.

Pros

You can work very independently. If you want, you have the opportunity to make your own job. Compensation is adequate. Benefits are ok. Good vacation allotment and holiday schedule. In the right place you might have a very decent manager.

If the management's vision pans out, it could be an interesting ride.

Cons

They over promote. Senior Management doesn't appear to execute well. They have a lack of attention to operational aspects of the business; Lack of clear vision.

Company is a serial acquirer with no clear integration plans or understanding of the businesses they purchase. They end up squandering opportunity, potential businesses, and shareholder value buying high and selling low.

Advice to Senior Management

Don't buy companies if you don't know what you are really going to do with them.

Pros

Some cool technology and good people

Cons

Macrovision is in the business of acquiring companies and then breaking them apart for key components - this can be a good strategy if you know what you are doing, but I'm not sure they know what they are doing. There tends to be a distinction between early Macrovision employees and new employees from acquired companies - just look at the senior management and you see who stays and who goes. Another challenge is that many of their acquisitions are way upside down in regard to how much they paid versus what they sold them off for - this leaves them with a high debt load and fewer revenue opportunities.

Advice to Senior Management

Ensure that your chosen strategy doesn't blow up in your faces

Pros

good package, benefits, but a lot of waste of talent and resources. great possibilities with all the cool technology and the growth in the industry in general.

Cons

lack of direction, guidance from management leaving the bulk of the company wondering where things are headed. so many projects half-started, or started and then stopped before being carefully considered up front, made for a lot of waste and squandering of possible successes.

Advice to Senior Management

clear strategy, communicated well, and be more consistent. consdier the importance of retaining good people and attracting talented new hires rather than a short-sighted revenue target that doesn't allow for medium and long term growth.

Pros

Originally was a great company to work for. No good reason to work there now.

Cons

Poor senior management. Inability to deal with acquired companies. No interest in developing technologies, only milking current tech for as little cost as possible. Lots of politics and power struggles between senior management with different teams fighting (no kidding!) with each other to win favour and take control of projects.

Advice to Senior Management

I think most of the bad management have either left or moved to Acresso. For the current management, I assume you are there for the money or because you are from a recently acquired company. In which case, enjoy the ride.

Pros

Comp is good because for those in most positions, it's the only reason you would stay.
Passive patent revenue is HUGE, yielding phenomenal operating margin

Cons

Patent revenue cannot last forever :)
New corporate strategy every 1-2 quarters
Many illogical acquisitions, a sort of "frankencompany" with several non-synergistic units
Highly political, lots of VP and executive turnover in the past couple years
Non-existent culture. Hawaiian-shirt day for real. Ever heard of Initech?

Advice to Senior Management

New revenue streams cannot possibly yield operating margins that patents do, figure out how to present it to wall street and fine the people to develop a winning new product internally ... don't rely as much on acquisitions.

Pros

Not sure. Nope, not really anything good.

Actually there are some really good, fun and intelligent people working here. Problem is they'd be better off working where their ideas and brain power could be put to good use.

Cons

Company is struggling to provide value outside of IP licensing. Company depends on IP licensing.

For most people with any interest in doing something good or interesting at work, it makes for a very insipid environment.

Advice to Senior Management

Start leading. Start communicating regularly. Stop focussing on short term revenues. Start innovating. Ensure you are going to relevant in 5-10 years time.

Pros

it was a part of the industry that i have an interest in and would tak pleasure in working in, however this was overlooked by senior management on all cases and with all employees showing the same keen attitude to deliver results

Cons

the management did not have a clue how to run the company and my direct manager was more interested milking the company for his own personal benefit and to use his time at work to persue other non work related projects only to come down hard on his team at the drop of a hat for supposed underperforming. lead by example rather than having diferent rules for diferent people. Macrovision is not a company that recognises talent bu rather a company where if your face fits then you will go far

Advice to Senior Management

there needs to be more recognition of workers performance and ability to perform at their job and less " your in the upper management club"