Sun Microsystems of Canada Reviews

Pros

pros
nobody used windows, sleek, thin terminals running solaris ran everything here.
managers, and employees in general were all very friendly
worked hard, but didnt feel like work alot of the time

Cons

cons
company was sold
products werent competitive enough

Advice to Senior Management

na

Pros

technology, leadership, compensation are key contibutors to facilitating a good environment.

Cons

politics were difficult, overall great but management direction weak and processes were challenging at best to work within

Advice to Senior Management

better management, timely bonus payments

Pros

I work with some great people and have been involved in some fascinating projects. Once you master the bureaucracy (and accept it's weirdness), you can get a lot done if you are working in a technical role. Compensation is very fair, and the work from home option has been wonderful - I have never been more productive in a job.

Cons

It seems likely that Oracle is going to dismantle huge parts of Sun which of course will have a direct effect on Sun Canada. I think we will become a true branch office with little local management. A significant layoff is expected.

Advice to Senior Management

I have no advice for the soon-to-be irrelevant leadership at Sun Canada.

Pros

Amazing place to learn, everything is open, very smart colleagues.

Cons

Depressing financial results, acquisition by Oracle, lack of clear roadmap to success

Advice to Senior Management

Nothing much to say now with the Oracle acquisition, is there?

Pros

Relaxed corporate culture. Work/Life balance is great. Market competitive benefits.

As for people, some of the greatest minds in the business work at Sun. The company still hangs on to some of the fun corporate culture of the dot.com days.

Cons

Relaxed corporate culture.

Management lacks focus and has poor record of execution. Too many decisions are made at the same time without thought of how they may impact one another. The company sometimes competes with itself and ends up losing to the competition.

Poor morale due to continued layoffs.
Poor investment in internal IT contributes to morale problem.
Poor communication and lack of cohesive teamwork.

Advice to Senior Management

Take decisive action, manage the business and stay the course. The company continues to waffle with its strategy and lacks commitment to direction.

Pros

Good people, fair management, decent pay, flexible conditions. For the most part, anything within the Canadian operation is pretty good - it's when the US exec gets involved that the problems start.

Cons

Living with the mis-management and poor decisions of senior US management. Terrible morale of field teams who daily have to live with the actions and decisions of executive members who are one or more of incompetent, disinterested, or working solely to cover their behinds/collect undeserved bonuses.

Advice to Senior Management

Change of Senior Management team. Nothing can change until this bunch of clowns is given the boot. You don't hear a word of support or respect for them from anyone - and these are mainly long-time, positive Sun employees who are desperate to support their company and succeed.

Pros

Dynamic environment. Terrific people. Best products.

Cons

Sun has tinkered too much with their go-to-market sales teams. It is sometimes under a false illusion that Sun reps can change how Sun business is conducted with their respective customers. The market has changed dramatically in the past few years and commodity servers are here to stay. Sun

Advice to Senior Management

1. Begin a serious marketing campaign to rebrand Sun at a minimum. Insure that this campaign is continuous throughout the year (not just at a product intro).

2. To grow and prosper Sun needs to develop allegiance from new customers outside the Enterprise space. Sun has suffered for far too long and partners are frustrated with their lack of market visibility in the SMB space. Sun reps focus on Enterprise but little attention and resources are given to SMBs. Sun mistakenly believes that partners are expected to develop this market.

3. Reliance on SPARC/Solaris much too high for Sun product ecosystem. Sun should be embracing Linux, not picking at it at every turn for it's lack of features or other. Sun needs to give linux a Tier 1 internal support just as Solaris. Customers are turning to other suppliers due to this.

Pros

Perhaps a good place to work for those seeking to strike a good balance between work and life. Very flexible hours, telecommuting arrangements, telecon bridges, etc.. make it easy to work from anywhere. Fair salaries and benefits. They have clusters of very strong engineering expertise here and there and if you happen to work on projects with such people you learn a significant amount of new useful skills.

Cons

"RIFs" or Reduction In Force are quite frequent and at times appear to be missing the root cause. Some products are over-engineered such that not all customers see all features being that useful. Some products are engineered quite right but are presented in a way that masks their true utility behind marketing rants and slogans. This makes sales job more difficult I reckon.

Advice to Senior Management

For HR and Management -- seek for talent within the company, there's plenty! Learn to recognize and harness it, do not let it go. For marketing -- use concrete terms and simple language when describing products/services.If you can put less scientific slant on it, please do so as I am sure your sales will appreciate it. For engineers -- do not assume that all the customers have Eng. degrees. So, make it simple and reliable.