Sun Microsystems Reviews

Pros

Sun was supportive of work/life balance, offering a flexible schedule, telecommuting, good benefits, and good pay. Employees were treated as valuable assets.

Cons

Sun had frequent reductions-in-force, which made everyone hunker down in fear. Career advancement was extremely limited, unless one or more managers were laid off.

Advice to Senior Management

The management strategies for open sourcing software without providing services to support enterprise versions of the software never made sense to me. I wish Oracle luck in monetizing what it's bought.

Pros

engineering-driven culture
flexible work environment
work-from-home allowed
great technology
really knowledgeable senior people
respected as a technical leader throughout the industry
committed to open source

Cons

engineering-driven culture
not much business acumen
great technology, but not good at monitizing it
not growing much, so difficult to advance

Advice to Senior Management

Need more of a business focus. Sun is involved in more projects and in more areas than it can afford to, based on its headcount. Sun needs to focus on a set of fewer key projects.

Pros

Good brand image
Opportunities to learn (thousands os white good papers and templates)
Flexible work environment
Excellent colleagues

Cons

Soma lacks of Sales Team (without clear targets)
Becomes more confuse with Oracle's aquisition

Advice to Senior Management

Keep focus on business/clients that really worth.

Pros

Very open and innovation-oriented company culture with much knowledge and technology sharing both within and outside the company.

Cons

Was not able to capitalize on a huge amount of technological innovations because the senior management did not identify and encourage the most promising technologies and products.

Advice to Senior Management

Not relevant since Oracle acquired Sun in Jan. 27, 2010.

Pros

The amount of resources given to do the job and the advocates you will find are high. The benefits and the work/life balance are also strong.

Cons

Unsure work environment and the company is very large so there are lots of political fiefdoms to navigate before anything meaningful can get done.

Advice to Senior Management

When the company is being bought, it is important to clearly communicate to employees the situation regarding the acquisition otherwise the morale drops.

Pros

Good culture. Nice energitic folks.

Cons

Management had no clear direction. Good projects got cancelled for the lack of funding. They kept on exaggerating about our financial condition even when they were shopping around to sell themselves.

Advice to Senior Management

Need to have more focus and clear direction.

Pros

Great resources across business units
Helpful and engaged colleagues
Well qualified co-workers
commitment to doing things right

Cons

My biz unit has a tendency to rush to ship status, which results in cutting corners. The quality of the people doing the work lets them get away with it, but every now and then it catches up.

There is a tendency to allow "pet projects" - projects with no demonstrable commercial viability but some VP protects it because he or she has convinced themselves it will be great. This results in wastage due to mis-focused resources.

There is also wastage due too many different directions at once. I'm sure this will go away with the change to Oracle.

My specialty is especially under-resourced, spreading me wayyy too thin.

Advice to Senior Management

Focus on the market and what will make money. Ensure systems are built right from the ground up.

Pros

Great, smart co-workers (for the most part)
People willing to work hard, but not over-worked
Work/Life Balance
Decent salary and benefits

Cons

Senior Management just did not cut it.
Constant threat of layoffs
No raises past 3 years
Difficult to work in a struggling company

Advice to Senior Management

Too late. Senior Management never figured out a way to make money. It's that simple. I appreciate that they hesitated to do that ONE BIG MASSIVE layoff, but that resulted in about 8 years of constant layoff fears. If they couldn't do that, they needed to make money off those cool technologies. Never happened.

Pros

- Flexibility
- Work for home
- Open door policy
- Ability and encouragement to move to other organizations every 2 years

Cons

- Lack of management accountability
- Lack of promotions, bonuses and raises in the past year
- The final Sunset happened with the Oracle acquisition

Advice to Senior Management

- Accept responsibility and become accountable. Don't reorganize every year, allows for no accountability.

Pros

Great pay, benefits, and the ability to work at home. I had the opportunity to work alongside some very brilliant people which in turn helped me to excel at the numerous engineering positions I held during the course of my employment there.

Cons

A great amount of disarray following the Internet bubble burst, and again after the new CEO took over. Repeated statements from upper management about how we had suddenly become a software company while we continued to make our profits from hardware sales did nothing for the morale of the hardware engineering departments. Due to a complete lack of focus, new chip designs were late to market and subsequently killed off before even reaching silicon.

Advice to Senior Management

Too many chiefs, not enough indians. Extremely poor communication about the company's direction going forward. A complete unwillingness to explore new product ideas. Contrast this with Apple's ability to reinvent itself at will, and you'll know exactly what I mean. But all this means little now that the SUN has set.