Sun Microsystems Reviews

Pros

It was a fun place to work, the "Google" of its time.

Cons

The company lost its bearing starting at around 1995 and after a swift, bubble-driven spike, it sunk and eventually went away "quietly."

Pros

Generous salaries, bonuses and fringe benefits. Talented, educated technical professionals all around you. Company commitment to working from home and global teams. Cool products.

Cons

Weak leadership at the top set the tone for management downstream. No clue how to market their great products profitably. Questionable business model for selling IP.

Advice to Senior Management

It's Oracle now, and I've heard management is more disciplined. Performance reviews have apparently become more just and supported by evidence versus political alliances.

Pros

good company to work for, very innovative.

Cons

no real growth, team morel was so low.

Advice to Senior Management

Should improve team morel, focus on innovation

Pros

Good benefit package. No one has to work very hard. Nice workout facility. Beautiful environment. Good access to interesting talks and outside research. Free ergonomic evaluation.

Cons

Passive-aggressive silo-ized environment made progress difficult. Newcomers completely shut out of interesting proceedings. Ludicrous intranet infrastructure. Absurd IT infrastructure requiring employees to work on non-standard hardware. Bad support for remote work.

Advice to Senior Management

All management of Sun Microsystems should be eliminated in the new Oracle regime. The company culture needs a complete reboot.

Pros

Redefined much of the computing landscape; from processors through software.

Cons

Jonathan Schwartz. The BOD surely must have had a reason to implode the company; but it's unclear what that reason must have been

Advice to Senior Management

Never should have acquired "Lighthouse" Schwartz should have had a rich and fufilling life somewhere else.

Pros

The team of people are amazing and there was very strong team collaboration.

Cons

Heavy workloads as the company continued to downsize

Pros

-nice campus
-diversity
-good training
-tools are handy

Cons

- they laid people off in a second

Advice to Senior Management

People are people!

Pros

flexible environment is good for creativity

Cons

no raise for long time

Advice to Senior Management

need to find a good way to make money

Pros

great people, easy to get along with and not much backstabbing
good lower management, they do their best to make their employees successful
relaxed atmosphere

Cons

stressful, fear of getting laid off

If the company was doing better financially and was not for sale it would have been one of the best places to work.

Advice to Senior Management

I have no advice for the management, during my stay there they did everything exactly the way they needed to do.

Pros

Strong spirit of knowledge sharing, mentoring, and collaboration
Some of the brightest people I've ever met
Deeply ingrained commitment to inventing cool stuff
People always willing to listen to new ideas
Honest and honorable corporate culture
Extensive open source and community-based standards work

Cons

Old Sun was a much better place than what it turned into during the last few years before Oracle acquisition
Confusing product lines and seemingly non-existent marketing
Never quite figured out how to make money from open source
Seemingly fickle changes of direction in product strategies and acquisitions

Advice to Senior Management

Thanks for many good years. Sad to see it end. Wish the last few years were better managed from strategic standpoints.