Symantec Reviews

Pros

- Interesting Projects and Programs
- People
- Management Vision

Cons

- Globalized at the expense of productivity in some areas

Advice to Senior Management

- Keep doing what you are doing

Pros

Good place for house wives who wants 9 - 5 job with flexibility to work from home.
Good campus
Generally people are nice outside the work setting
Nice cafeteria

Cons

The only other disfunctional place I have seen is Washington DC. This place is equally as charged politically as DC if not more. If you are customer focused and driven to do the right thing for your business and customers who you serve then this is completely wrong place for you. IT doesn't care what business wants as they are completely wrapped around their beureucratic processes and procedures.

So much so that time sensitve business initiatives that needs IT help is left side ways and nobdy cares.

On top of it their whole outsourcing engagement to HP is so pathetic that it is practically impossible to get anything done.

If you are of the type who fly below radar and come to office and don't do anything and go back then this is the right place for you. If you are of the ambitious types then you will feel like commiting suicide. You are better off working in 7/11 than this place.

My personal advice to go-getters and people with strong drive to achieve somethings "STAY AWAY" from this place.

Advice to Senior Management

Fire the entire sr. management and get new blood in place.

Pros

Symantec is a very well known name in the industry, and there is a lot of name recognition.
Symantec offered a very good benefits package. Their vision care, in particular, completely astounded my optometrist--he'd never seen such a good package.
Some groups work very well with allowing telework and flex-time.

Cons

Management out-and-out lies.
Management does not communicate effectively with their direct reports.
There is a huge outflow of highly qualified people, and they are being 'let go' for no apparent reason.
The benefits package for 2012 has completely changed, and has dropped to one of the worst that I've ever seen.
The products that the availability side of the house are delivering are, honestly, too little too late. They have an amazing vision of where they want to go with this, but the execution leaves a lot to be desired.
It appears as though they are positioning the company to be sold -- cutting costs, cutting benefits, getting rid of "expensive" people.

Advice to Senior Management

If you want to maintain your market lead and grow your business, you need to start making better decisions. You also need to make sure that your company vision is understood and embraced by your employees. It doesn't help if your employees are always wondering why a particular decision has been made.

Pros

Good Pay and nice benefits.

Cons

Managers are not honest - even on small items that do not really matter - can not trust anything that is said

Pros

Flexibility and work-life balance at Symantec

Cons

Passive aggressive culture, silos across the company/departments, hard to get things done.

Advice to Senior Management

Need for systemic changes - biz dev, sales, marketing are not aligned, each system (rewards, structure, information, etc.) is tugging the organization in a different direction.

Pros

A largely comfortable place to work with a nice campus and reasonable compensation.

Cons

In a word, politics.

This is a deeply political organization where your prospects for growth are largely based on who you now and how you work those relationships.

Advice to Senior Management

Less turnover. Annual layoffs and a tendency to eliminate skilled people hurt moral and efficiency.

Pros

Diversity, Many smart and talented people work here, good benefits

Cons

Management's vision not communicated well, too slow to move on good ideas, we don't make the best decisions based on the market

Pros

OK salary , good benefits, very good people at lower level (technical, senior)

Cons

Upper management is completely lost, no innovation, ideas are very hard to be accepted, very hard to make progress/changes.

Advice to Senior Management

Start to look for people that actually know stuff and have respect for employees.

Pros

Pay is decent at symantec and they make products that keep computers safe, something anyone could be proud of.

Cons

Company is massively siloed which results in constant infighting between PMs and departments and plenty of confusion as to what comes out of who's budget. Executing can sometimes be tough.

Advice to Senior Management

It's a good company that's making excellent products, but there's a lot of crossed wires between all the management layers. Symantec needs to run leaner, faster, and smarter to win.

Pros

Well recognized name in the industry and with customers. Big enough company that there are a lot of different areas you can work within.

Cons

Confusing portfolio and strategy with lots of overhead of people that don't do a lot. Acquired companies seem to lose R&D funding to key initiatives and we end up spending a lot of money just 'keeping the lights on' and being just good enough.

Advice to Senior Management

Streamline the portfolio and better define the value Symantec provides to it's customer base. Customers see our solutions as lagging the market in terms of innovation.