Rovi Reviews

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

Pros – The Benifits look better than my previous employer, Salary level is average or more a little bit here. Company profit margin is high since it major gets revenue from IP licensing.

Cons – no long term plan for empolyee devopment yet, and didn't provide a good package( or compensation) when laid off some empolyees due to company organization adjustments.

No, I would not recommend this company to a friend – I'm optimistic about the outlook for this company

Current Employee – been working at Rovi full-time for less than a year

Pros – Rovi has an interest in becoming a premiere company to work for and they treat their employees well with compensation, benefits, flexibility, and an interest in innovation.

Cons – Rovi is very top heavy (too many VPs) and the culture (what there is of it) is organically-grown from multiple acquisitions. While there have been efforts over the last year to improve upon this, the culture still has a ways to go to get there. Luckily, upper management is aware of this, though no real change has yet to occur.

From a technical standpoint, Rovi has the capability to do great things, but existing infrastructure, monolithic and stagnant practices, and an ongoing problem causing strife between partners and potential partners with lawsuits and zealous IP defense cause problems in the marketplace.

Advice to Senior Management – Culture needs to change at Rovi more quickly and Rovi needs to look at the people that are holding it back and consider action. We've heard a lot about change, but we haven't seen it.

Management also feels like a monolith, sitting atop the organization with many, many heads. It doesn't feel accessible.

Likewise, Rovi has a presence across the US and around the world, but we often have to deal with people who are time zones away as part of the same team and it's difficult to form a good working relationship under those conditions.

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

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

Pros – Not anywhere near as toxic as places I've worked in the past
The work is interesting and there's a variety of things to do
Very flexible
For the most part, they acknowledge and appreciate the best performers
Generally fair

Cons – Lots of empty words from management
As others have said, there are way too many managers, it's ridiculous
Too many people sitting around doing nothing and management doesn't notice or doesn't care
Occasionally stressful
Not providing the best tools to get work done

Advice to Senior Management – Have and show more respect to the rank and file, please. If you say something, mean it. Otherwise don't bother saying it. Be aware of what your people are doing or not doing, seems like a pretty basic aspect of managing.

Yes, I would recommend this company to a friend

Current Employee – been working at Rovi full-time

Pros – great co-workers, fun aspects to job, work with media, best media data in the business

Cons – Too many executives (100 total), constantly behind the curve, a lot of double speak, too little pay, the head of the animal seems completely disconnected from the rest (but adding to itself regularly).

Advice to Senior Management – if you want to create a stronger "company culture," then you should invest in the base of your infrastructure, not make it top-heavy.

No, I would not recommend this company to a friend

Current Employee – been working at Rovi full-time for less than a year

Pros – Good team work, great benefits, good management, and flexible work hours.

Cons – Nothing bad to say, just a lot work and sometimes it makes you feel overloaded.

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

Current Employee – been working at Rovi full-time

Pros – Flex Time, Focus on Innovation and a company in transition. San Diego is a fun office!

Cons – Top Heavy. Too many free-loaders not putting in their time.

Advice to Senior Management – get leaner. top heavy is not advisable.

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

Former Employee – worked at Rovi full-time for more than 10 years

Pros – Good benefits. Competitive salary. Friendly employees. Some bright employees. Projects can be fun to work on.

Cons – There have been very bad hires over the course of the last 2 years at Rovi. They've restructured their Engineering divisions by getting rid of technical leaders and replacing them with business leaders who have less than an ounce of technical knowledge or abilities. These are the people making decisions and determining the direction of a technical company.

You are not asked for your opinion or input on projects, instead you are told what to do by the non-technical leaders. Even if what they are asking doesn't make sense, who cares? Figure it out and make it work, or else. If you try to have an opinion, you will find yourself curbside very quickly.

The CEO is boring. I have fallen asleep through every single one of his all-hands meetings. I could never trust a leader who puts me to sleep.

On the subject of bad hires, there are a lot of low-level (director and below) hires which need to be reevaluated. There are too many employees who have no clue what they're doing, but somehow kissing the right bottoms to excel and stay gainfully employed.

Direction of the company is unclear and seems to change with the wind.

We were told if there are problems, talk with your manager. Unfortunately, the managers are afraid to bring it up to their managers, so talking to your manager doesn't do much good.

Work-Life balance used to be good, but then they "laid off" a large number of the workforce and redistributed the workload to other areas. If we try to have lives outside of work, then our work will never be completed. Most employees are finding themselves working longer hours or after-hours on a regular basis.

Advice to Senior Management – Start listening to your employees. Like, really start listening to them. Tom, if you truly want people to be an adult and leave if they're unhappy, then I hope you and the rest of your management team have fun building, testing and deploying our products.

Yes, I would recommend this company to a friend

Current Employee – been working at Rovi

Pros – Great place to work. Focused and balanced vision.

Cons – Communication between teams can be challenging at times.

Yes, I would recommend this company to a friend

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

Pros – Rovi presents a challenging, customer driven environment. Winning in the marketplace, recent cultural improvement initiative is sincere. The pace is rapid - a pro and a con. If you're looking for a place to coast - keep on looking. If you like challenges and an opportunity to win - take a look. Not for the faint of heart.

Cons – Too much to do, not close to enough time to do it. Very results oriented.

Advice to Senior Management – Continue to focus on the core business and customers. Wisely chose what NOT to do.

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

Current Employee – been working at Rovi for less than a year

Pros – lets just say the pay is good and if your a third party contractor looking for work this is the company to partner with... They seem to be looking for cheap viable options to contract most of their in house services too. Eventually that will affect the overall quality of their myriad of acquired "old technology" . The in house tech /eng teams are really good to work with most of them know their products and are always willing to help and assist. If your a fresh mind coming out of college and you want to test your skills these guys are the Jedi masters to learn from. This company seems to be behind the curve on a lot of marketing/technology trends " they seem to still party like it's 1999". Yes the company is in transition but, that's just a PR way of saying we don't know what we want to do yet or we don't know how ..

Cons – I'll keep this short VERY POOR communication and leadership. Lack of quality control , lack of training , lack of general control , lack of concern. This seems to be the foundation of a not so promising company culture development. I haven't worked for them for a very long time but trust me this company has a long road ahead of it.. and the bleeding has only begun..

Advice to Senior Management – OWN your problems don't ignore them ...

No, I would not recommend this company to a friend – I'm not optimistic about the outlook for this company