VeriFone Reviews

Pros

It is a solid company with a good potential for growth. Your coworkers become more like friends and family. The company always does as much as possible to ensure you have the resources you need.

Cons

Being a large company, it is possible to get lost. Past financial setbacks have been covered at the expense of the employees.

Advice to Senior Management

If VeriFone continues to be a leader in the payment industry through ingenuity and acquisition, our growth will continue exponentially.

Pros

Really smart people in development and engineering.
VeriFone is the leading technology company in the payments industry hands down.
Excellent benefits.
Good people who have become extended family and friends.

Cons

Multiple reorganizations make VeriFone a completely inefficient and unproductive work environment. There are at least 2 a year. You never know who is in charge of what division at any time therefore you don't know who to go to in order to accomplish anything. I really feel Executive Management does this to keep people from succeeding. This way merit raises are few and performance reviews (which are a joke anyway) can be kept low.

When performance reviews are completed, they always have to go back and be adjusted to make a bell curve. They're usually copied and pasted from the previous year because you do have a new manager and he/she doesn't know what you're doing anyway.

VeriFone never sleeps. Many of us spent 100% of our lives living and breathing VFI. It was expected and we did it for the good of the company. We didn’t mind it but it would have been nice to hear a word of thanks every now and then. While at home with your families, it is standard behavior to be on the phone, BlackBerry, or computer constantly working to meet unreachable goals and deadlines because of constantly changing roadmaps and scrapped projects midway through completion. If you do manage to reach the deadline, the bar is raised higher

I don't know any VFI employee who is truly happy. A lot of good people have been let go recently and morel layoffs are coming. Good folks are leaving because of the continual restructuring and lack of a clear direction. Look at VFI like a bad marriage. You have to get a divorce. It's down to who is going to make the move first - you or them. Be the one to leave first. You will be happier. There is life after VeriFone.

Advice to Senior Management

It's a shame that Sr. Management continues to stifle creativity. You have some really smart people who can help you be successful but you must listen to them. l

Also, if your customers aren't happy, you won't be in business for long. A company can't be just a ton of salespeople who don't know what they are selling. Customers pick up on this. Become a customer focused company instead of just a revenue focused company. Revenue will grow much faster if your customers are happy. You're out of touch with what's going on.

Innovate - don't reinvent. Think of when the MX first came out and do that again. Stop buying companies and use talent from within.

Pros

Great Benefits, Good Location, I like the Industry

Cons

Verifone Petro Division has little opportunity to show your talents. Constantly adding addition to your product line made by other engineers. Work load is kept so high that if you did have an idea that you would like to code and demostrate kiss your life goodbye while your working on it along with the before mentioned additions, a few enhancements and supporting bugs built in by other engineers but now labeled "As your bug" and will be talked about in that manor as well by management. Several people I know quit do to the stress level there and the lack of raises to compensate for the effort at the end of each year ( even though acquitsions keep happening so obviously the money is there if they wanted to reward their employees). Verifone seems to be obsessed with expanding ( including India so beware of a possible offshore shift ).

Advice to Senior Management

Learn what motivates your employees, because there is nothing but an increase in work to look forward too.

Pros

Leads in the US are good and kind. They will give you ample time to complete you work. They are very supportive in work and will help whenever needed

Cons

The manager in India is a moron. Neither do the higher manager realize it nor do they take action against him. To the best of my knowledge he is the most unethical person you would ever see. No knowledge on technology but still boasts about things he is not aware of. There is absolutely no relation between the hike and the performance. Most of the time the manager does not know what you have done and he still manages to rate you. There is no attention paid towards employee's concerns.
Technology wise you will not be working on anything that will help in career growth. Very difficult to sustain outside the company.

Advice to Senior Management

Treat sub ordinates with respect. If you can't address their concerns atleast keep them informed. The exit interview forms filled when leaving the company must be looked into. If they don't look at it there is no point in asking the employee to fill it.

Pros

In the company, everyone is quite friendly and interactive. Although independent working ability is first prerequisite, you can easily find support or help from others.

Cons

Like most of other industrial big company, the working pressure in VeriFone is so stressful that sometimes you might feel depressive. It is advised to complete your task before the deadline, otherwise you will really get into a big trouble.

Advice to Senior Management

For the directors of R&D department, they are very nice to talk to you and to help you whenever you get a trouble.

Pros

Capable and friendly colleagues, pleasant working environment

Cons

no work life balance, little direction and sense of where the company is going

Pros

Work culture is good
You can balance very well your personal and professional life
In the center of the city so no wastage of time in traveling

Cons

If you are from C, unix background then hardly you make use of Unix internals here
No matured way of working, No SDLC, No Architecture
No great products when it comes to s/w part of it, Your project changes very often
Senior management never fight to get good projects

Advice to Senior Management

Verifone family is very small and their is lot of politics played here. Try controlling it....
Behave properly with everyone in the team.

Pros

fair pay structure, Sales decisions override engineering design, and software design decisions, as in: Department needs to sell X thousand more units this quarter to make numbers, therefore this department will buy stuff from that customer as part of a quid-pro-quo exchange to obtain a large sales agreement from said customer , That sales agreement includes the customer's purchase of X thousand units allowing department to make numbers for the quarter. Of course department has to shell out $$$ to do so and saddles internal development with resources/products that do not meet requirements.

Cons

Sales decisions override engineering design, and software design decisions, as in: Department needs to sell X thousand more units this quarter to make numbers, therefore this department will buy stuff from that customer as part of a quid-pro-quo exchange to obtain a large sales agreement from said customer , That sales agreement includes the customer's purchase of X thousand units allowing department to make numbers for the quarter. Of course department has to shell out $$$ to do so and saddles internal development with resources/products that do not meet requirements.

Advice to Senior Management

PGP is a freely available encryption program that protects the privacy of files and electronic mail and any other form of electronic transaction <hint Hint>. It uses powerful public key cryptography and works on virtually every platform.

Pros

Great co-workers make it a good palce to work
Good range of products constantly updated
Generous share options
Travel opportunities

Cons

Sales targets are often unrealistic and unachievable
Technical support for some products is not good enough
Very demanding work schedules

Advice to Senior Management

Reviews should be informal but frequent at direct manager - employee level not by HR in order to motivate teams

Pros

There is incredible upward mobility at VeriFone if you work hard and stick with the company. It is a mid sized company that is pretty nimble.

Cons

Sometimes the workload can be draining, management has a very operational role (good and bad). Some are over due for raises.

Advice to Senior Management

Continue to grow, pay appropriately, produce products that fill new market segments, lead the payments/retail industry with innovative strategy and products.