Sybase Reviews

Pros

Sybase has great products, a lot of smart people who believe in the direction of the company, and good benefits.

Cons

Could have better communication between management and staff. Also, a career path for most jobs is missing. Sometimes it seems that once you're on a team, that's it.

Advice to Senior Management

Be more concerned with your most valuable asset, the people, rather than the bottom line. Take care of the people and they will take care of the company.

Pros

good pay not much pressure stable friendly environment

Cons

no career advancement. Doing the same thing since I joined the company

Advice to Senior Management

pay more attention on how to retain people and career advancement for the staff

Pros

Some of the people are great to work with.

Cons

Cult-like atmosphere, filled with yes-men.

Advice to Senior Management

Listen to your employees, they know more than you think.

Pros

Paid slightly higher salary than the other systems integrators I interviewed with. At the time I had about 4 years of software engineering experience in cleared government work.

Cons

Generally treated like the pawn you are. Was not at all impressed with the skill or competence of the management. Seemed like there was a high churn rate.

Advice to Senior Management

I think every company says that it will be easy to move between contracts. Sybase was no different but when I wanted to move there was very little available despite their large footprint within the DC area.

Pros

Some good people to work with

Cons

People work way too hard for their compensation levels
Incompetent management
need to struggle very hard for promotions

Fear based culture - Senior managment leadship surrounded by obedient people all over the company.

Advice to Senior Management

too many VPs for a comapny less than 4000 employees

Pros

The people are very nice and are willing to help. A lot of people work for a long time. Nice day care

Cons

No growth opportunities and low compensation. People feel a lot of unsertainly after SAP aquisition, managment does not seem to value the talents

Advice to Senior Management

Management should value more the employees and their talants. Compensation should reflect market rates. Vacation also needs to be increased.

Pros

On-campus fitness center, daycare facility, cafeteria big pluses. Good healthcare and insurance benefits. Dublin campus located in a suburb with reverse traffic is helpful (esp compared to SF or SJ).

Cons

No telecommuting allowed. Christmas Week mandatory company shutdown uses up a week of worker's vacation time.

This is always brought up during "Ask the CEO" sessions; reason given is that we get short vacation (giving up a full week forced to take during Christmas) and no telecommuting so we can enjoy good healthcare. I suspect a lot of people will be willing to pay for higher co-pay or prescriptions if we could work from home a few times a week.

Advice to Senior Management

Your must-work-on-site rule is Draconian. What kind of example do we set to when we develop mobile software, but the developers themselves are not allowed to work from home? Get with the 21st Century. Being proud of saving energy by using efficient lightbulbs is hypocritical when you require people to drive their cars and waste time commuting everyday. That's a WAY bigger carbon footprint than any energy savings you get on campus.

Check with HR; top reason for people leaving the company is because you won't allow telecommuting. Yet you have offices all over the world. Just doesn't make sense. Let people work from anywhere they want; just make sure they do the work.

Pros

Sybase has a fantastic group of people working at the tactical level. People in marketing work hard are are very bright. For the most part people stay in marketing at Sybase because they get comfortable with the technologies and enjoy working with the people.

Benefits are also great and in Canada, vacation is good (topping out at 4 weeks).

Cons

Sybase is run very top down and operates very lean. The culture is based on fear to an unhealthy degree. For example, the CEO has to approve every hire - including interns! Mid-level management is not given the authority to hire staff where needed and to effectively run the business.

Many people work extremely hard and not recognized or compensated for their efforts. Many of these people operate at a Director level and are never given promotions beyond Sr. Manager. Career paths are extremely limited. Employees who have been with the company for a long time are compensated significantly below the industry average, though new hires make competitive wages. Salaries have been frozen at one point for 2.5 years, and raises are minimal at 1-3% per year on average.

Advice to Senior Management

Start to care for the people who actually get work done - they are the ones who have made you succesful. Controlling costs isn't going to get you far when everyone who works for you is overworked and underappreciated.

Pros

Great benefits.
Good food in the cafeteria
wonderful coworkers
great company vision
good pay

Cons

lots of middle management to get in the way
company is always moving toward a goal but never lets you know how you fit into this goal

Advice to Senior Management

Help get entry level employees into better positions earlier before the get lost

Pros

- Great location if you live in Tri-Valley
- On-site gym
- Some chances to work on newer technology (mobile, Eclipse plugins)
- Health insurance can be VERY comprehensive for not a lot of cash out-of-pocket. Really cheap drug co-pays.
- Lots of good people, who know what they are doing and are good engineers. Everyone I've worked with is good natured and helpful.

Cons

Day to day
---------------
Unbelievably bureaucratic development process. There's a ton of overhead involved in just being able to check out and change one file. Managers must approve code checkins. Code reviews are done, but good luck getting your system set up to take part. Many internal tools were developed in-house, and it shows. Quality seems to be hit or miss, and is quite frankly, understaffed.

Much work is done overseas, so if there's a problem blocking you, you're pretty much stuck until the next day.

Strategy
-----------
Lots of disarray when it comes to product strategy. Who is doing what? What are we doing? It seems to change every couple of months. There's a fine line between reacting to what customers/markets want and not sticking to a strategy long enough to see what works. There's also a sad lack of understanding of the target developers.

Management
------------------
While I may be reporting an isolated case, there's lots of micro-management of day-to-day tasks. There are good managers here, but it's very uneven.

Advice to Senior Management

Bring the jobs back to the US and you'll see a big increase in morale and quality. Take a hard look at your processes and ask if they make sense anymore or could be done more efficiently.