SERENA Software Reviews

Pros

Comp plan, independence, ability to change direction of the company, employees actually care about each other and want to see the company successful.

Cons

401K and benefits not as good as bigger companies.

Advice to Senior Management

Stay on current theme, direction and focus for growth and success. Do not go back to past years of everything is about EBITA. Keep investing in new technologies.

Pros

Coworkers are great Many talented hardworking people. Some good ideas and messaging to move forward with.

Cons

Management, especially senior management, not so great. Don't appear to care about employees. Quality of some products is deteriorating.

Advice to Senior Management

Keep with the new solutions strategy, make quality a priority, stop treating valuable employees like dirt.

Pros

Compensation Plan cannot be beat
Customers love our people and our products
Postive reinforcement for a job well done, better than any other place worked before

Cons

Past problems with direction, executive turn over, messaging issues are still lingering and tough to overcome

Advice to Senior Management

Continue with the current product direction and messaging as it is resinating with our customers and prospects alike. No more change, we got it right this time!

Pros

Great technical oriented people, non political environment. Some of the middle and upper managers are great to work with. Relaxing.

Cons

benefits are very expensive, no 401k matching, Serena doesn't do good job retaining it's people. Compensation is OK. Not cutting edge technologies.

Advice to Senior Management

Think about the people that are making the things work. Cutting benefits and shifting burden of cost toward the employees just so your bottom line looks good is causing you to lose good people.

Pros

Good people to work with
Interesting technologies
Challenging environment

Cons

Banks run the company. When Serena went private they took out MASSIVE loans. Company making good money but because they have to pay back the loans, they lay people off. End result, people still on the payroll are squeezed more and more. Started with the group when there were 5 managers in support. Ended with 2. And the support organization which makes most of the money is squeezed even more to get all cash from them. No salary increases in years. Training went away with the first round of layoffs.

Advice to Senior Management

Re-negotiate your loans so that the bankers don't determine policy in personnel management. Don't take bonuses when your employees get nothing in salary increases and you are cutting benefits.

Pros

Good benefits, decent pay, multi-national company, and the ability to effect change from the lowest level to the top of the Org.

Cons

To much turn in how Serena wants to go to market.
No salary increases for several years.
economy has worked against Serena the last few years

Pros

Some talented people who take care of customers. (Most are jumping ship though.)

Cons

Lack of direction
Lack of focus
Management has no idea how to position the products
Allowance for poor treatment of employees
Lots of fingerpointing
Unethical behavior in customer interaction

Pros

The rank and file people are great to work with. The compensation is average and benefits are above average for the area

Cons

There is no positive direction here. There have been many layoffs and people left are severely overworked. The company is now selling "product suites" which simply are vaporware - they do not exist. New CEO is only interested in sales and bottom line so products are poor quality. Morale is horrible. No salary increases for 3 years and counting.

Advice to Senior Management

You have good people working for you who want to make a difference. Stop abusing this good will as everyone is looking for new opportunities. There are other things which are as important as sales and quality is one of them. Your "Quality Initiative" is just lip service -- fix it or continue to pay the price.

Pros

Great work culture
Good Compensation
Cool life

Cons

No Company party
Little old fashioned

Advice to Senior Management

Become a young Company

Pros

Good solutions that can compete in the market. There are some very talented people working at Serena, but because are very limited.

Cons

Lack of direction and focus with a mentality of upper management that if they push more it will happen.

Advice to Senior Management

Pick a strategy and put the resources and entire company behind it.