SDL plc Reviews

Pros

have achieved constant growth over years

Cons

not many employee benefit availble

Pros

- Definitely the most advanced in terms of technology
- Mostly nice people to work with in the team
- Working hours are good (on paper)

Cons

- Although the SDL is a technology leader and spends a lot of money to acquire other companies, the technology is often not well thought of from a translator's viewpoint and actually causes a lot of trouble sometimes (Studio 2009 I am looking at you)

- The payment as an intern is fine (however, the work load is not). After 6 months you usually get promoted to trainee...the pay is not good, but barely acceptable for a year, after which you usually get another promotion to "translator"...the pay "increase" is a joke and people in Munich are not able to even afford a moderately good living for themselves unless they share their appartement with someone else...after another 3-4 years you might become senior translator...they pay is still not good at that point. Also payment is not negotiable for the most part as SDL's has a very strict policy who gets paid how much and when.

- High fluctuation...on average there are about 2-3 people leaving every month for a 40 employee office...this is horrible...often these employees have not been with the company for even 2 years...sometimes even much less...high fluctuation causes untrained employees to "train" new employees...projects get handed down every few months to another dedicated "lead translator" who really is at this point nothing more than the one to take the blame if something goes wrong...This even happens on the management level.

- Managers generally (sometimes at least) try to pretend that they care for your well being. But their people skills are mostly not present at all. There are a lot of forms to be filled out how employees perfom, quality gets rated every month or so, but no one actually cares how YOU feel in the company.

- Overtime is not paid at all, but employees are forced to stay until the work is done if something needs to get done today...some people are really staying in the office for 2-3 hours more a day...

- Since this year SDL Munich at least pays capital-forming benefits and takes over a part of the travel expenses (the closer you live to the workplace the better). The possibility of receiving bonuses (even for Christmas) is very slim.

- Loyalty towards the company diminishes from day to day. This has a huge impact on the overall speed and the quality with which translation requests and complaints are handled. Poeple just don't care anymore after a few months at SDL.

Advice to Senior Management

Respect your translators and pay them what they deserve. Treat them like valuable employees instead of objects that can easily be replaced no matter their contribution to the company or their experience. Reward employees for good work and at least pay for the extra hours!

It is called incentivizing! A word that the top echelons of SDL have probably never heard of...it's only about the figures. I imagine this will bite you in the end. I surely hope so...Quality and happy workers should be the focus and not how many millions of euros of profit you can make a year (which was quite a lot last year by the way...)

Pros

- Job stability
- Career growth
- Experience in project management
- Localization experience
- Good peers

Cons

- Too much bureacracy for as quick as you are expected to handle situations.
- Promotions come often but often receive a "pay increase" that is the same as you were making before.
- Business Unit Director and above expect you to want to work 60 or more hours a week regularly to get ahead.
- Too much noise and chaos in office to be able to think or have a conversation with a customer on the phone.
- Management vocally only cares about $$
- More work tossed at less and less people
- Turnover
- Incompetent Operations Manager who senior management thinks is brilliant allowed to come and go as he pleases while everyone else works likes slaves.

Advice to Senior Management

- Your customers could be reading this right now!
- Your customers will tire of cycling through SDL contacts that don't stay
- Pay people fair wages considering the increasing profitability of the company. We are tired of hearing about how you can't pay more money to people because other divisions aren't doing as well. We aren't stupid - your financials are public! With as many hours as you expect people to work I would make more hourly at McDonald's
- Deal with your resourcing issues in all offices. Apparently Mark Lancaster needs another gold chain, but maybe instead you should hire enough people to process the increasing work you are getting
- Get an HR department that is loyal to the employees rather than senior management.

Pros

-Growing, fast-paced company
-Easy to get a job (due to very high turn-over)
-State-of-the-art technology in the industry
-Recognized in the industry, good to have on your resume

Cons

I was very surprised knowing the situation is exactly same in the U.S. I can fully agree with my fellow employees there, it's all same here in Japan. It tells something...

-No HR (not only department, but no full-time HR staff either!)
-As a result, bad recruiting, no training, no adequate review and extremely high turnover: out of 120 employees or so, 2-5 employees leave every month
-Low salary
-Benefit is just what required by the low - and you won't even get them until you ask the company
-Only your responsibility keep increasing without any promotion or salary increase
-As a result, no loyalty to the company and very low morale
-No private: 2-4 over time every day without compensation
-Managements tell lies, don't keep their words

I don't recommend this company as a place to work for on a long term. You will get exhausted and disposed.
If you are young, ambitious and energetic, it's good place to gain some experience and step up to the next company after 2-3 years. You will have quite many job offer for the company name.

Advice to Senior Management

Now we have a great deal of business opportunities, new and potential clients without enough resources to handle them. People leave the company in short period, and the skills and knowledge are not passed to the successors. It's a great loss.

Value your employees.
Show them respect.
Provide them trainings.
If you manage to gain their loyalty and good, talented employees stay at the company, your success will be for real and stable.

Pros

- Good people outside of the management cadre

Cons

Echo all of the cons I see in the other reviews. I'd add that:

- Management are some of the most humorless, uninteresting people you're likely to meet. Small little careerists shipped in from far-flung places to torture staff with their cardboard personalities, en route to whatever it is that they expect to find at the end of the rainbow. Sharing a meal with them is like being waterboarded.
- Should add: UK management will show up flexing gold chains and open dress shirts (no visible irony).
- 90% of sales / account management staff are also talentless, ESL-damaged know-nothings adept at keeping their lips flapping but little else.
- SDL technology is roughly on par with what Fisher Price would put out if it were a software company. It's also your liability as a project manager.

Advice to Senior Management

They've all clearly bought in to their little pyramid scheme, so there's no point in moralizing. Enjoy your boring lives, I guess.

Pros

Technology and innnovation is at the top of the Pros list: The company is at the head of the industry, so one of the assets for employees is the inmediate access to the latest technology. As a company SDL is dynamic, fast paced and in constant change, which will test your ability to adapt quickly to the limit.
Multicultural environment: Global atmosphere
The company has a "name", so not bad to have on your resume.
In general, it is an ok starting place to acquire business experience and skills before you move on to something else, if you manage to survive. It will also give you a crystal clear idea of what you want and you don't want in your working life (especially the latter)

Cons

The benefit package is the very basic one and the contract all employees are made to sign when they start is a bit of a scary read, and it does make you wonder what you are really getting yourself into. Not a good start. Holiday entitlement, maternity, sick leave, pension scheme etc...are all the minimum standard required by law. The salaries are lower than average, compared to what is out there in the market.
Employees are expected to work UNPAID overtime whenever required. No compensation or reward in any shape or form is given to them for this (e.g: days in lieu, promotions, a complimentary email sent to the big bosses or even a pat on the back).
Promotions are opaque, unfair and biased (age, looks, etc..), most of the time based on favouritism rather than merits. Salary increases and promotions are delayed as much as possible, when they happen. If they get approved, it will take about 6 months before your title is finally changed and you start to get your increased salary.
This is a bit strange for a company that pride themselves in being fast paced! The HR department totally supports all of the above.
 Training is really not good enough, which makes the whole point of working in a company at the head of technology innovation totally useless. You will be expected to know things you have not been trained for and you will be blamed if you dont know them. The only way of getting out of this one is investing extra hours in learning by yourself, which will be of course unpaid and unsupervised and on top of your daily duties. Otherwise, expect to be treated quite harshly if something goes wrong at production level. The feeling is that you have to be constantly alert in order to cover your back at all times and not be blamed.
There is also quite a lot of unhealthy office politics. A lot of strategic thinking and moves will be required of you in order to survive.
Employees are stressed, overworked, underpaid and not rewarded for their hard work in any shape or form. It is not the most self steem boosting atmosphere but rather quite inhumane and harsh. This bullying culture filters all the way from the top of the company to the very bottom. There is something seriuosly wrong here!

In a nutshell, the company pride themselves in doing well in times of global crises, but this is achieved at the expense of the employees' health and well being.

Pros

Advantages of working at SDL are:
* Good, stable and reliable company that has meant a very stable job for me in the past years
* It is a constantly changing environment which always brings about new challenges and opportunities in a role. Nothing stands still
* Some very nice people to work with
* Opportunities to progress within the organisation
|* Good visibility with c-suite and an open atmosphere

Cons

* Is fast paced so you need to be able to keep up with that drive to constantly improve
* It is a fast moving, changing environment, so if you don't like change, wouldn't be the place for you

Pros

Excellent technology which means we are the "big kahuna" in our space. The culture still has the feel of a small company even thought we are a $250 Million organization.

Cons

We have the usual growing pains where some systems are rather eccentric. Little by little they are being replaced with professional infrastructure. The salaries seem low to me.

Advice to Senior Management

Provide stock to key employees. Better bonus and incentive plans would make employees feel their efforts are rewarded well.

Pros

People there in non-management roles are some of the best people I have ever met
great compensation
great bonus plan
great place to grow
Mark Lancaster
environment
direction of company
HR
Data Quality

Cons

UK based company, so politically challenging
profit margin comped SVP's ruin otherwise great company
poor upper management in SCT division
tracking of commissions is non-existant

Advice to Senior Management

n/a

Pros

- Easy to get a job due to lots of people leaving the company, making room for others.
- Good place to gain experience before moving on.
- When you reach a management position, you may receive bonuses.

Cons

- No appreciation for translators, who are not treated like highly trained professionals but like stock animals to exploit, e.g. no bonuses, no client visits to gain knowledge, no
- Promises are not being kept, e.g. promise of promotion after six months, then moved back by another six months etc. indefinitely.

Advice to Senior Management

Please show some respect towards your translators: they are highly trained skilled professionals who should be valued as such. Promises should be kept and communications should be honest: if there is no money for pay raises, how can there be money for acquisitions AND bonuses?