Symyx Technologies Reviews

Pros

Nice technologies to work and grow. Flexible hours

Cons

Inexperienced young leadership. Too many wrong decisions.

Pros

flexible work schedule and great people.

Cons

management was not focused on the business.

Advice to Senior Management

the upper management was not focused equally on all business units.

Pros

Technology and science, high ratio of Ph.d.s.

Cons

Lack of understanding of marketplace

Advice to Senior Management

Your company is people.

Pros

Symyx was made up of great groups of really intelligent people. It was an interesting place to work, while it was still Symyx.

Cons

Things really started to change when senior management changed, and then, of course, when the company "merged" and ultimately moved away from what it started out as an became just another software company. I miss the good old days.

Pros

dynamic, fast pace, aggressive, small size, original

Cons

too local, frequent organizational changes

Advice to Senior Management

diversify

Pros

Symyx provides good compensation and good management

Cons

Career advancement is difficult at Symyx

Advice to Senior Management

Look to promote internally where possible to keep talent within the organization. Look to provide more fun activities in the workplace to lighten things up.

Pros

Salaries are above average
Company is located in a nice business park setting
They do offer telecommuting for certain positions

Cons

LIttle respect for employees
Constant threat of losing job
Little chance for promotions and advancements
Training dollars are hard to come by

Advice to Senior Management

Expect significant employee turnover when the economy improves. The constant threat of losing ones job has severely impacted employee morale.

Pros

Flexible schedule. However, this is diminishing with quickly growing outsourcing to India, and having to work at very inconvenient times.
Exposure to a diverse mixture of technologies and tools.

Cons

Shortly put: stress.
With significant lay offs happening 1 or more times per year the work environment is quite stressful with a lot of politics; in some groups focus is on appearances rather than results.
Very uneven set of people. There are really good ones, but also astonishingly incompetent ones, especially among middle management. Because of that sometimes it feels that you work for several completely different companies with conflicting objectives and values, which also adds to stress level.

Advice to Senior Management

Look beyond high level pictures and statistical graphs and find a way to see most valuable people (hint: they are not the ones whose main objective is to impress you); try to retain and empower them.

Pros

Manager are friendly, easy to work with, also gives you clearly direction and useful suggestion after review meeting to help you finish your project.

Cons

Sometime need to wait for a long time to get what you need between departments; not taking the most efficient approach to work on tight deadline project.

Advice to Senior Management

Better support and communication between departments, simplify documentation process to help getting first prototype build, improve on software to simplify ordering process

Pros

Work life balance was the best part of the job.

Cons

Not confident in direction of company.

Advice to Senior Management

Good luck!