Sun Microsystems Reviews in Denver, CO Area

Pros

allowed to drive project to resolution

Cons

bad follow through on business leadership

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

Fully supportive management and great career opportunities if you work smart. Cool opportunities abroad. Lots of room to excel and grow in your experience.

Cons

Sales force is an overall failure. Unprepared for the .com bust.

Advice to Senior Management

Get more realistic with corporate vision.

Pros

Flex schedule was awesome. Could work remotely.

Cons

Wasn't sure what the business model was really.

Advice to Senior Management

Open source is great... But it doesn't keep the lights on...

Pros

technology as opposed to competition

Cons

short sided management decisions for personal gain

Advice to Senior Management

can Jonathan Schwartz

Pros

Work life balance. Nice people. Know how to manage a telecommuting team. Good benefits.

Cons

Not succeeding at the time when I was there so there was a bad feeling about layoffs and budget cuts.

I found the ~4%/year raise was not keeping up in the market with the value I was creating, and the skills that I was acquiring. As noted in my Advice section, I left for an MBA and easily got a job somewhere else for 2.5x what I was getting at Sun.

Advice to Senior Management

Figure out how to hire people back in to the company after they go get their MBA. I left to a Top-10 MBA program and spent 2 months trying to figure out a place to come back to, but nobody seemed to know what to do with an MBA or how to value it. So I ended up at another company that had clear ideas of what they wanted to use MBAs for making about 2.5x what I had left Sun at.

Pros

Sun had some of the best technologies and was a place where you could always find support for new ideas.

Cons

Sun was very disorganized. Like all large companies whole portions of the company were ignorant of each other. It was impossible to connect the sales teams with customers, resulting in often frustrating customer visits.

Advice to Senior Management

Come up with coordinated leadership and understand how to sell the awesome products you already have. Don't simply pawn off your issues; recognize what does -- and doesn't work.

Pros

-Flexible hours
-"Work from Home" program
-Global environment
-Casual dress
-Excellent workforce in the company
-Much respect among co-workers
-Great work-life balance

Cons

-Long work days
-Many meetings
-Constant change in priorities
-Constant re-organizing of the company
-Reduction of Workforce was stressful
-Power plays and much maneuvering by middle management to be better positioned to maintain their jobs prior to Oracle acquisition

Advice to Senior Management

Should not have merged with Oracle

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

Innovation, cool technology, opportunities to grow, great working environment, provides a good challenge for the engineer looking to expand their skill set. Typical tech vendor experience.

Cons

Poor choices by management, loss of direction and unclear intentions. Sale of the company to Oracle, which is in the process of eating the remaining young. There is a state of fear among all the legacy Sun employees, no one is willing to stand up and voice an honest opinion for fear of loosing their job, which sadly is already gone. Oracle has no idea what to do with what they've purchased.

Advice to Senior Management

Find the jewel that was Sun and nurture what's left. It will return profits to you as well as innovate in areas that were never consider. Sadly... the brain drain has already happened and what's left is middle management, covering their tracks and hoping to eek out a few more weeks of pay before the axe falls. No one has any balls.