Sun Microsystems UK Reviews

Pros

Relaxed work ethic, friendly environment, pay & benefits on-par or better then elsewhere, being bought by Oracle

Cons

too many lay-offs, being bought by Oracle

Advice to Senior Management

Manager/Director level management is good, from there on up it's a joke...

Pros

Good promotions, bonuses, support, customers, advancement in information technology, a part of oracle, sufficient, generally small, supportive colleagues, paid travel.

Cons

Promotions quite random, management very biased and supportive towards other lower members of staff, customer reviews declining, not the best pay.

Advice to Senior Management

Less biased promotions an increased pay would make the overall experience at Sun Microsystems much better. There was some appearance to exceed in the Job I took, but I seemed to get put down by the management and almost forced to forget about advancing in my career.

Pros

professional, good culture, friendly, happy place to work then

Cons

redundancies and lack of plan for the future were apparent but this was more to do with the economoy

Advice to Senior Management

Management were good, good reviews, solid plans for future, excellent training opportunities for people

Pros

Innovation, flexible management, can be a fun place to work - so long as you get your objectives done.

Cons

Poor pay in recent years, lay-offs a norm given tough economic conditions

Advice to Senior Management

Stop changing strategic direction every 6-12 months

Pros

Training offered is fantastic, really good advancement. Underlying culture is good, some incredible people. Good benefits. Salary is higher than average.

Cons

Top heavy, poorly guided management structure. Lay-off after layoff has reduced our ability to deliver some services to customers. Awful internal tools seem to be decades behind the industry standard

Advice to Senior Management

I think it would probably best if come the next RIF, there were greater cuts from management level in order to balance out the company

Pros

Some of the best technical staff you could wish to work with
A real team spirit amongst staff and willingness to help each other
A great company for work/life balance
Compensation isn't the best in the industry but is still ok compared to other tech sectors companies

Cons

Lack of management direction on how to make the good products sun has profitable
Too many middle managers, so information not getting back to the top
Some of the flexibility promoted by Sun is very much down to whether you have one of the Sun managers or the the ones who are stuck in the dark ages about home working

Advice to Senior Management

Go back to your routes when Scott GENUINELY had a open door policy and none of us where too low to speak directly to the men at the top (it made us feel valued), and stop creating managers and outsourcing only to end up with your few remaining sun badged staff having to pick up the mess each time the outsourcing partners don't have the skills to do the tasks.

Pros

The most important facets of life at Sun are technology, training and development, and fun. We're determined to continue stretching boundaries and breaking new ground in order to provide our customers with a service that's second to none. That's why all our employees get the chance to work with phenomenally advanced technology. All our employees benefit from training and development options at every stage of their career with us. And all our employees benefit from working in an environment that's designed to make life enjoyable.

Our values are reflected in the unofficial mottos 'work hard, play hard' and 'to seek permission is to ask for denial'. Our people are empowered to challenge the way we operate, shaping their own career and introducing their own ideas to the business. We also encourage and reward teamwork, whether it's between employees, customers, vendors, shareholders or virtual teams operating across the globe.

Linked to these values is our aim to ensure that the rewards and benefits our people receive are among the best in the industry. We pay salaries that compete with any of our competitors, and these are reviewed at regular intervals.

Benefits include:

    * a portable pension scheme
    * a life insurance scheme
    * a long-term disability allowance
    * a stock purchase plan
    * a health care plan
    * medical screening
    * maternity and paternity benefits
    * an employee advisory resource

Cons

Old infrastructure. Too much middle management.

Advice to Senior Management

The most important facets of life at Sun are technology, training and development, and fun. We're determined to continue stretching boundaries and breaking new ground in order to provide our customers with a service that's second to none. That's why all our employees get the chance to work with phenomenally advanced technology. All our employees benefit from training and development options at every stage of their career with us. And all our employees benefit from working in an environment that's designed to make life enjoyable.

Our values are reflected in the unofficial mottos 'work hard, play hard' and 'to seek permission is to ask for denial'. Our people are empowered to challenge the way we operate, shaping their own career and introducing their own ideas to the business. We also encourage and reward teamwork, whether it's between employees, customers, vendors, shareholders or virtual teams operating across the globe.

Linked to these values is our aim to ensure that the rewards and benefits our people receive are among the best in the industry. We pay salaries that compete with any of our competitors, and these are reviewed at regular intervals.

Benefits include:

    * a portable pension scheme
    * a life insurance scheme
    * a long-term disability allowance
    * a stock purchase plan
    * a health care plan
    * medical screening
    * maternity and paternity benefits
    * an employee advisory resource

Pros

The best reasons to work for Sun Microsystems are it's products and the people that are passionate about the technology and our customers. There is so much to be done here. So many innovations developed and being developed now - ZFS, DTrace, Open Storage (S7000), SunRay, Virtualbox.... Sun truly is a great technical company to work for.

Cons

Sun has just lost it's way. Jonathan Schwarz has to take the blame entirely for this. His and his management team banging on about Open Source. Internally too, things are in such turmoil. Sun are trying to role out a global internal management/accounting/call logging/quoting tool called IBIS, but it just doesn't work and is way too slow and clunky - but still the management press ahead and launch it and now things take twice/three/four times as long to do! Sun has become too process driven - and the processes don't work!

Advice to Senior Management

Get rid of the management team! Let the techies back in control and lets innovate and lead with our products.