Sun Microsystems Reviews in Denver, CO Area

Pros

Entrepreneurial spirit, employee-centric HR policies, really smart, creative and caring people. Great technology.

Cons

Poor to just plain bad corporate strategy that spread the corporation too thin. Middle and senior management that didn't focus enough on business results and executed poorly on what it did focus on.

Advice to Senior Management

Cut down your ambitions. Focus on the Enterprise market. Abandon your open-source strategy.

Pros

Sun was an innovative company, at least at one time. They prided themselves on being great in a new space.

Cons

Did not do well after server market crashed. Did not do well with several mergers. Got acquired by Oracle on the cheap.

Advice to Senior Management

Please have a concrete strategy of where you would like to go when you acquire a company. First, second, and third options would be valuable.

Pros

Bright people, good working conditions including lots of flexibility. Broomfield a great campus.
Great technology and respect for good work

Cons

Lots of weak middle management
Endless conference calls
Many talented people let go whilst "yes" managers stay
Poor overall execution and strategy

Advice to Senior Management

Value strong managers, cull the "yes" folks. Focus, focus, focus.
Get out of non core business, trim the portfolio, and execute

Pros

Great work at home policy, and great projects made for a very happy work environment for me and most that I worked with.

Cons

Too much management overhead, and sometimes the direction was not clear, or changed while in the middle of a project.

Advice to Senior Management

Learn from your mistakes, and listen to your employees. There is too many managers in relation to the number of employees.

Pros

Innovative tech environment, individual contributors can make major impacts to marketing campaigns, events, and technology evolution at their level (if self motivated), great salaries, shorts, jeans, barefeet, dogs, afternoon beer bashes, nice corporate campuses

Cons

Incompetent executive and VP leadership (from 2004 on) that have failed to execute any kind of monitiztion strategy for the company. Employees, mainly individual contributors, have kept this company going day by day (no stretch here). Management heavy, key individual contributor contributions get little to no recognition (one has to just be proud of what they are doing knowing they will not get any credit), intern programs were dropped years ago leading to noticeable drop in the ability to cultivate and hire young talent.

Advice to Senior Management

Movement under Oracle is the best case scenario to keep key Sun born technologies and dedicated employees alive and going into the future. Writing this at Sun/Oracle CIC -- Thanks ORCL Corp.

Pros

Great, intelligent people
Work/Life balance
Remote/telecommute
Eco-Responsible company
Great reputation

Cons

No job security whatsoever
Poor upper management
Reorganizations too frequent
Lack of processes

Advice to Senior Management

Hopefully this is a moot point as it is now Oracle mgmt running the show.

Pros

Schedule flexibility and work-from-home has to be the best perks working at Sun. Not only was WFH available but in CO, most folks didn't go into the campus if they didn't have to. There's a downside in that the campus could be too quiet at the beginning and end of the week but the flexibility was great.

Cons

Due to the financial struggles of the company these past years, training and promotions were pretty scarce. There were still opportunities but not at the level it should have been for a hi-tech company. Biggest disappointment was how they dealt with the global ERP implementation project coming to an end with the announcement that Oracle was acquiring them.

Advice to Senior Management

Not much to say here since as of end of January, many senior executives have and will be making their farewells.

Pros

Flexible work from home arrangements
Great pay and benefits
Incedibly talented employees work here
Great products and services
Lots of great people in Broomfield

Cons

Carried too much cash and made itself a very attractive acquisition for Oracle etal.
Failed to monetize products into revenue and profit.
Too much emphasis on personal life balance at the expense of work balance

Advice to Senior Management

Not to be so arrogant about the products and market
Do good and not treat people as if they are human capital that is expendable

Pros

Very flexible, including work from home options, hours, etc. Good work/life balance.Opportunities exist for training and expanding skills. Reasonable employee benefits and compensation. Some room for growth and advancement

Cons

Politics often get in the way of progress and deflate passion and discourage work above and beyond whats required. Fairly bureaucratic. Last 5 years have been very challenging due to the company's failure to find success in the current economic climate.

Advice to Senior Management

Have a more focused strategy. This company does mediocre in many sectors but is not a market leader in one.

Pros

Wonderful, positive environment (if you were in the right group). Team oriented, work from home benefits, very balanced work-home life.

Cons

Just couldn't get Wall Street to support their direction. Oracle buy out will probably let go of a lot of the Sun talent which is really a shame.

Advice to Senior Management

Try to save as many Sun jobs as possible, there are a lot of talented people.