Sun Microsystems Reviews

Pros

Great technical learning experience.
Opportunity to learn whatever you wanted.

Cons

bad management at a number of levels.
marketing none existent.

Advice to Senior Management

Clean house and get outside help. Think IBM in the past

Pros

Great place to work when things were going well. When they weren't, which was the last ~4 years of its existence, it was stressful and everyone was always on edge.

Cons

In the 10 years I worked there there were12-13 RIFs. Way too many for any company. Promotions were none existent in the last few years.

Advice to Senior Management

Too bad Sun doesn't exist anymore....Seems like management could have done a better job to position the company to weather the storm.

Pros

Dynamic, exciting place to be; middle managers encouraged individual growth and supported many employee efforts.

Cons

Changeable budgets and priorities, frequent layoffs made it difficult to focus.

Advice to Senior Management

The emphasis on open source seemed incompatible with the need to create profit. Too bad for us all.

Pros

- entrepreneurial culture, great for self-starters
- very approachable higher management, friendly co-workers
- flexible work schedule, good work-life balance

Cons

- the company needed to be more disciplined in order to make profits from its products
- needed clearly defined goals and benchmarks in measuring success/failure of a product, project or program

Advice to Senior Management

discipline and accountability

Pros

Great work/life balance and an exciting place to work. Innovation and differentiation were important cultural elements.

Cons

Despite strong products and capabilities, the company couldn't sustain it's own weight.

Advice to Senior Management

I thought the leaders at Sun were great at motivating and providing an encouraging vision for the company. Scott might have stuck to his guns a bit too long, but Jon was a visionary guy.

Pros

Excellent environment for innovation. Very employee centric work-from-home model. Great people and supportive management overall.

Cons

Global project suffered from scope and schedule creep, resulting in high costs and overhead as well as missed milestones.

Advice to Senior Management

Too little, too late.

Pros

Flexible working environment. Good employee benefit. Friendly environment for entry level professionals. Opportunities to career development and self enrichment. a

Cons

Too many management meetings and reports. Some time it takes long time to reach decisions. Redundant managements. Some employees work way less hours.

Advice to Senior Management

Reduce one or two levels of management to make it more efficiently. Reduce work force to keep high level competition.

Pros

Technology leadership was great - R n D investment was amazing. Life balance helped too.

Cons

Couldn't adjust quick enough in the tough times market.

Advice to Senior Management

It's too late now....

Pros

Culture
People
Ability to make good money

Cons

Poor internal systems
Too much red tape to get things done
Senior Management gives away too much for free

Advice to Senior Management

Too bad you sold to Oracle, they will destroy the old culture as well as the vision around OpenSource software. Purchase made sense for sun shareholders so hopefully it all works out

Pros

Innovation, fantastic technology, flexible work conditions (can work from home pretty much at any time), great place for engineers, good salary, open to wide variety of educational backgrounds, lax culture, great intelligence.

Cons

Flexible work environment made it very hard to get essential face to face interaction which leads to growth, too engineering focused meant not enough business guys around that were needed to save the company.

Advice to Senior Management

Too many of you were kicking back when Sun was going under...in bad times, you should be more focused not less.