Stoneriver Reviews

Former Employee – worked at Stoneriver full-time for more than 7 years

Pros – Gave ample opportunities to grow in my career; pleasant people to work with

Cons – The business model is heavily dependent on selling the product to insurance companies. Not too many clients left by the time I left the company.

Advice to Senior Management – Trust employees

Yes, I would recommend this company to a friend – I'm not optimistic about the outlook for this company

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

Pros – The company is undergoing changes and possibly consolidating even further. Expect better outcomes in the future. Employees are friendly and most are willing to go an extra mile in their work.

Cons – Lack of direction and loosing market share. Most of the jobs are moving away from this area. Lack to growth opportunities.

Advice to Senior Management – Reinvest in your current products and help employees grow.

No, I would not recommend this company to a friend

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

Pros – We have meaningful work and customers that have been with us for the long haul.
Benefits and pay are competitive.
Respectful and knowledgeable group of employees and management.
Software solotions is a competitive environment with opportunities for meaningful work and assignments.

Cons – We work hard and that may not be for everyone.
Some projects required travel but not all.
Reward is based on contribution and not time in grade - if that is your thing, great, if not, you may not be happy.

Advice to Senior Management – Stay focused on growth opportunities.
Continue to develop less experienced supervisors and managers.

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

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

Pros – New management team really listens and cares

People are customer oriented and customers recognize it

alot of momentum right now with new products

Cons – With alot of people working remotely, communication among teams could be better at times

Advice to Senior Management – Keep the current trend going

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

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

Pros – The company continues to be fairly successful, in spite of themselves. They lost a large part of their client base to a rival company, and the shortcomings of the rival product are one of the big reasons why Stoneriver Insurance Solutions remains in business.

Cons – The management of day-to-day software development is carried out by a "good old girls club", many of whom do not have a good foundation in practical personnel management. They do not like to heed good, solid advice from their staff, and the result is the loss of good employees and continuing erosion of market share.

Advice to Senior Management – My advice to upper management is to clean house at the mid-manager level in the Iowa office.

No, I would not recommend this company to a friend

Former Employee – worked at Stoneriver full-time for more than 7 years

Pros – The industry they are in is a very stable.

Cons – The place is filled with unemployable workforce. Nepotism, favoritism, is at it's worst. Management has no real strategy in place.

The company has very unethical business practices. Most of their clients will not do business with them anymore. They have lost the reputation in the (very small) market.

Advice to Senior Management – The ship is sinking. Plug the (above) holes or leave the ship. It's a scary place out there - Good Luck!

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

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

Pros – Pay is pretty good and the people are good to work with. In my particular case I can work from home a lot, but they aren't allowing that as much any more. The technology is ok to work with for the most part.

Cons – Large enterprise issues like complete hard drive encryption that slows the machines substantially.

Work isn't too challenging and there isn't a lot of room for creativity. No Macs allowed. The management talks of Best in Class software, but it isn't supported from top to bottom. E.g., we must use IBM Rational Functional Tester even though developers and QA all dislike it.

We have to use ClearCase even though nobody likes it.

We say we want best in class, but look to develop mobile solutions that are lowest common denominator-driven for ease of cross platform development (iOS & Android).

There isn't a EVP of Product Design, which I believe is required if you want best in class products.

Advice to Senior Management – Hire an EVP of Product Design (see Sketching User Experiences, Bill Buxton).

Break up the big groups and let smaller, skunkworks style teams tackle specific problems. Stop offshoring -- get the best developers (see below) and put small groups to work: 4 or 5 to a team max.

Don't saddle developers with terrible tools or you won't get the best developers. These things will drive them away: ClearCase, Rational Functional Tester, MacAffe Endpoint Encryption (only use it where you HAVE to use it -- most of us don't have customer data on our systems).

Be open to non-enterprisey solutions to enterprise scale problems. Read 32Signals.

Yes, I would recommend this company to a friend

Current Employee – been working at Stoneriver

Pros – Great people to work with
Competitive Pay
Good benefits
Shows employee appreciation by extra events - Holiday party, Bingo, birthday celebrations, etc.
Quarterly "Rapids" Awards
Promotes from within
Treats employees with respect
Fantastic supervisor
Flexible time off

Cons – My only complaint is that if you have a scheduled day off but work more than 40 hrs in that work week, you still have to use a vacation day.

Advice to Senior Management – Keep up the good work. Continue to look for new trends. Continue to show the hard workers that their posiitive attitude and hard work are appreciated. Keeping us informed and motivated helps improve morale.

Yes, I would recommend this company to a friend

Current Employee – been working at Stoneriver

Pros – Ability to work from home on occassion, great benefit
Competitive pay
Great benefits including healthcare
Very nice people to work with
Friendly managers which makes one feel valued

Cons – Limited advancement potential
Currently no bonuses or raises due to poor business performance
Poor and declining employee morale, alot of turnover of senior employees
Open cube work environment, very noisy and distracting when working

Advice to Senior Management – At the end of the day it will be the employees in the trenches that make this a successful company and have made it such in the past. Through thick and thin some of the senior employees have perservered and stuck to it enabling this business to carry on even during rough times. We need to think outside the box on what it will take to improve employee morale and retain knowlegeable employees. One of the main pros listed repeatedly is job flexibiliy and work from home options. The ability to work from home is thoroughly entrenched in this workplace and is one of the few reasons some employees have not left. If we want to make a change to employee flexibiliy think carefully about making changes which will limit this flexibility furthering low morale and promoting additional turnover. If we don't have the knowledge to do the job needed in the end we all fail as well as our business.

Former Employee – worked at Stoneriver

Pros – Nice mix of various technologies, good people to work with. Decent Pay

Cons – Politics between California and Denver office, nepotism, no clear direction for products, no clear career path for most of the people

Advice to Senior Management – Pay more attention to employee's need, provide more clarity on what is out there to achieve, provide clear direction for various product lines, kill the politics between CA and CO mangements

No, I would not recommend this company to a friend