Smith Micro Reviews

Pros

Good coworkers
opportunities to launch tier 1 carrier services
easy to experience multiple projects
chance to work in remotely located teams

Cons

employees treated as interchangable
senior mgmt planning is poor
satellite offices not treated as equal
hr function is largely ineffective

Advice to Senior Management

listen to reports
understand situations in remotes offices (visit sometimes)
concentrate on fewer products

Pros

Some great talent is drawn to the company and many stay. The pay is decent and the benefits are quite good. Work demand is fair most of the time.

Cons

Leadership has lost its way. Tons of politics at the top, but no clear vision is being shared. Good people are leaving because they no longer understand or feel able to support the direction.

Advice to Senior Management

You hire and pay for good talent. Trust your people and let them help you. We want to be part of the solution.

Pros

They have a reasonable benefits package.
Salaries were somewhat competitive with the market.
Some limited chances to work remotely.
Engineering staff is generally good.
A place to hide and collect a paycheck for a while.
Chance to work with mobile technologies.

Cons

Company depends on success from one or two clients.
Nepotism and cronyism in the upper management. Very 1950's attitudes.
Leadership lacks direction, ability to lead or innovate.
Company culture is very poor (poisonous?), employees and middle management are ignored, not allowed to contribute to helping the company succeed (just given marching orders).
CEO appears to make business decisions based on emotional and personal (non business related) reasons.
Upper management continues to get bonuses even as profits fall and stock prices are in free fall.

Advice to Senior Management

CEO should step down and make room for a real leader with modern leadership skills. The rest should step down or learn to appreciate and foster talent and innovation instead of just brown-nosing the CEO.

Pros

- Some exciting projects working with cutting edge technology

- Great flexibility with working hours

- Get to work with some very highly talented, experienced people - at least until they're forced out

Cons

- Bewilderingly incompetent managers leading failed projects, seemingly without repercussion

- I saw MANY people forced to leave due to project mismanagement from higher up, lack of fair performance/salary reviews, and similar events that simply shouldn't occur in a properly run company

- SMSI seems to derive most of its revenue from a very small number of high profile clients, which is inherently risky

- Very difficult to get management to pay for decent development equipment

Advice to Senior Management

Do a purge of management. There are people in senior positions at SMSI who do absolutely NOTHING, are happy to take credit for others' successes, and yet shirk any responsibility for their own failings.

Pros

Co-workers
Development group is great (depending upon the proj)

Cons

Leadership has no clear goals and sales people are in some fantasy world.
HR is clueless half the times
Senior management depending upon your group is lost.

Advice to Senior Management

have a clear view and push sales to learn the products.

Pros

Casual atmosphere, low stress, flexible work hours

Cons

Unrewarding work.
Senior Management have no clear view for future and poor leadership skills.
Senior Execs get all their raises and bonuses while employees don't get their reviews online if at all.
No real career path for people to advance.

Advice to Senior Management

Treat employees with respect, we care about reviews and raises as much as you do.

Pros

Everyone here seems to enjoy thier job. I am very happy with the atmosphere. There was a layoff of about 100 a few weeks ago that I thought would be very negative on the moral, but managment handeled it well.

Cons

Some people are negative about the outlook, but they are far and few between. Also, they run out of cofee sometimes, but it is fixed the next day.

Pros

Its easy to feel like one of the smartest people at the company since management is so poor. Honestly I would not hire any of the top management to work as a janitor at my company.

There were some very talented people at one time, they are all gone of course.

Cons

Smith Micro purchased a software division from another company who happened to be its biggest competitor. The software division it purchased had 90% of the market and all major U.S. carriers as customers. Within 2 years this management team destroyed what took 9 years to accomplish.

Advice to Senior Management

Quit

Pros

You would be working with modern / in demand products and technologies.
There are some nice and smart people at this company.
Some benefits.
Occasional travel opportunities.

Cons

Doesn't feel like a software product company, it is more like a consulting company.
Much of their revenue comes from software they write for other companies, not from their own products, which has been a big problem recently.
Young modern employees may not like the culture here.
Senior management seems to resent those lower on the org chart.
People at the top do not understand people management and have no interest in changing.
You will not see management asking random employees for input, or taking any surveys for improvement here.
Turnover rate before the layoff was around 20% overall , even higher in some departments.

Advice to Senior Management

Take a survey to see where you need to improve.
Walk around, talk to random employees. Relying on you management chain is a road to disaster.
Educate yourself on what makes a business an asset or a cancer to the community.
When you make people work late and weekends, personally verify that they feel the company has their back and the company is not abusing the privilege.

Pros

Latest tech trend for engineers

Cons

No forward planning
No leadership at any level

Advice to Senior Management

Lead