Symantec Reviews in Mountain View, CA

Pros

Has the potential to be a great company and market leader with correct focus and leadership guidance.. Good products

Cons

Constant re-org and layoffs. Lots of leadership talk about promoting from within but no or very little mentoring to the majority. Leadership picks a select few and offers them the majority of the available opportunities.

Advice to Senior Management

Smaller focus externally, larger focus internally and execute

Pros

1.Nice Office.
2.Diversified Workforce
3.Lots of different Product Lines: Consumer/Enterprise/Storage

Cons

1.Average Compensation.
2.No new innovations. Happens mainly through Acquisition.
3.Not much of passion among employees.

Advice to Senior Management

1.Start innovating from within.

Pros

Stable, Sustaining, Slow paced organization

Cons

Companies go to Symantec to die
Titles are inflated
Senior employees have no growth path
Politics is rampant and encouraged

Advice to Senior Management

Is Symantec AV, Backup, Systems Mgmt, Storage, or all of the above. Unclear where Symantec sees itself 5 years from now. Sharpen focus and integrate products and organization towards delivering that vision.

Pros

1.Strong business in Security
2. netbackup business is strong

Cons

1. Has not materialized Storage business(veritas)
2. Giant only thinks about security has not developed storage side of business.
3. does not understand how to sell enterprise products
4. has not been able to innovate around virtualization

Advice to Senior Management

1. understand how enterprise products works and invest accordingly, do not think just tin terms of selling anti virus to a consumer.

Pros

Symantec IT is a good paymaster along with bonus, 401k , ESPP, medical and stock options. Nowadays they are giving RSU instead of stock options.

Cons

some of IT groups has lots of office politics esp after they have outsourced their business to EDS or HP.

Advice to Senior Management

take close look at IT politics and reward and recongnize talented people otherwise most of IT people are ready to leave as soon as market improves

Pros

I worked on the Veritas/Storage side of Symantec. The biggest pluses were that everyone was open and available to answer any questions. The feel was determined by your manager - two groups on the same floor had very different dynamics. Know who you're going to be working for and how they view their direct reports.

Cons

As in any big company, we spent a lot of time in meetings. Beyond that, I can't think of too many downsides other than Symantec being trigger-happy with the layoffs.

Advice to Senior Management

Stop laying people off and then hiring more people. Have the guts to see your projects through.

Pros

Good salary, ok benefit (not as good as used to be with Veritas)

Cons

unfair bonus based on the grade level!

Advice to Senior Management

Please treat your people well

Pros

Time flexible.
Most engineers are dedicated and friendly to work with.
Most engineers have their own offices instead of cubicles.

Cons

Political issues are hidden. Bias exists.
Working hard won't always get you anywhere.
Work ethic can be compromised with seniority.

Advice to Senior Management

No comment.

Pros

Pay is good, benefits good (but not cheap).
Lot of good people working here.
If you land the right gig with right team, it can be an awesome place to work.
I know some very happy employees & they truly represent what Symantec stands for.
The company does take care of its employees, nice campus & some good perks.

Cons

Politics-A-Palooza!
Symantec is a great company but these days it's a place for managers, by managers...
(by the way, you can use the words Manager & "Friends" interchangeably)
As someone else said, Its not what you know, its who you know.
If you are in with the right people, it is true you can move up, fast - Regardless of your track record, or competence level.
On other hand, if you are the type who just like to do your job & do it well (sans shmoozing & politics), you want to innovate, learn and develop your career, BUT, have no real long term interest in ever being a manager, you can start your career-clock now...

After a while it becomes evident there are some very incapable and unprofessional people in lower & middle mgmnt ranks. Results in low morale, very little innovation, high turn-over, many qualified workers getting passed up or poor allocation of talent, not to mention very little work actually gets done.

Y.M.M.V.

Advice to Senior Management

Symantec needs to cut the mgmnt fat & change the work culture.
Really a sad thing as this is truly a great company but the people in mgmnt are ruining it.

Notice any game changing products from Symantec in past few years?
Thought so...
That is because the managers are still in meetings as you read this, debating whether or not to agree to enhance a product & then they will spend all next quarter figuring out who to assign what to & then more meetings to track deliverables, followed by more meetings to get status on the tracking of deliverables assigned to people who by now have been fired, laid off or quit out of frustration... Oh, then when its all finally done (by the offshore teams), you guessed it... Big party!!!

Pros

Competitive wages and benefits
Flexible work hours and telecommuting

Cons

As a tech writer (info developer at SYMC) your job is to fix the problems induced by the off-shore writers. It's very frustrating to the people in the States who are not only doing their own work, but having to pick up the pieces in the wake of off-shore employees.

If you want advancement, you're on your own there. No one is going to sit down and map that out for you, or even see a potential in you. Upper management would see that as a threat, not a help to the organization.

Advice to Senior Management

Count the cost of shipping products and assignments/support off-shore -- including having to fix what was started there.