Verisign Reviews in Mountain View, CA

Pros

Very good company to work for.
Lots of benefits (ESPP, company match for 401K, medical/dental/vision plans)
Great vacation policy (close to 4 weeks)
Lot of opportunities to grow professionally
Great people to work with

Cons

Sometimes people had to work over-time during release times

Advice to Senior Management

More transparency on the company direction

Pros

Significant role in delivering trust, safety, and security to the internet. Good pay package, especially the stock.

Cons

Overly cautious on the legal side. Hard to balance the two business units

Advice to Senior Management

Have the courage to make the tough personnel decisions, especially at the top

Pros

Work environment was very friendly and dress was fairly casual.
Benefits were great and full time employees received stock options.

Cons

A lot of changes with the sale of the SSL business to Symantec; resulted in the Company headquarters moving to Dulles, VA and most employees in California being laid off

Pros

Benefits were above the norm.

Cons

If you were a (typically male) friend of a Sr. executive- VeriSign was a great place to work. You really didn't even need a job description to get your VP title and privileges. But for everyone else- it was next to impossible to get noticed, promoted, etc. There were more VP's running around who a) had no direct reports and b) had no job description but c) were protected by an Executive. Very disruptive to moral and to those who worked hard and did not get noticed. Additionally come annual performance time- managers were given a "funded pool" and could divide up bonus and stock payouts based on favoritism.

Advice to Senior Management

Assign specific roles and responsibilities commensurate with job title. Make bonus payouts by team not individual and leave manager to make sure everyone on team is playing to level of rest of team.

Pros

Latest technologies and very friendly learning atmosphere. People do get promoted and they do get recognition . There are very reasonable people out there . Much better than bigger companies . ESPP , Bonus etc has always been great . Better than industry average . In my opinion very fair company

Cons

May be the managers or senior manager or directors need not not be that hands on . Not sure about it

Advice to Senior Management

they are doing fine

Pros

The compensation and benefits are very good.

Cons

The company is going through a transitional phase after selling the Authentication business to Symantec. They have decided to move all remaining jobs to Dulles, Virginia, regardless of whether they can find qualified people to fill them. Management also plans to support the remaining company with a fraction of the support staff, so many remaining people will be wearing multiple hats and have very broad responsibilities. There is also an issue with people being promoted to positions they are not qualified for, simply because they are in the right location.

Advice to Senior Management

Your actions this year have seriously damaged employee faith in upper management. If you are planning for the company to go forward, and not just getting positioned to sell the remaining parts, you have serious work to do gain any employee trust back.

Pros

Talented colleagues; good work life balance; good compensation and benefits; excellent bonuses and stock purchase, things are always slightly crazy

Cons

Mid-Management can be out of touch with their employees/teams; the grape-vine is normally light years ahead of official communications; often tight deadlines and unrealistic expectations

Advice to Senior Management

Do more management training; involve EEs more in what is going on; be more honest with what is really happening

Pros

It's a very execution oriented environment so if you are self-motivated and can get things done with little to no oversight, you will do very well. If you are someone who needs clear structure and guidance, it might not be the place for you.
Most of the people are outstanding - very smart and driven.
If you are willing to work hard and not take no for an answer, you can create a ton of opportunity for yourself

Cons

Most departments are not focused on process or best practice, its an environment where you get things done by figuring it out on your own, often without any guidance from management.
The company grew so quickly that the infrastructure is not well designed in terms of process or procedures.
There is often very little focus on work/life balance. People regularly work really long hours and it's more of an unspoken expectation than a one-off situation.

Advice to Senior Management

Focus on developing a long term strategy that you can stick to, and then figure out how to best communicate that to the entire organization in a way that everyone understands and can get engaged with. More transparency into the reasons for decisions and employee input into structuring changes would be ideal.

Pros

Great work / life balance.
Overall package is quite good - on both salary and benefits
Felt that it was very meritocratic - the more you did, the more they entrusted with you.

Cons

Lack of investment in new products
More concerned about margins than advancing the company / products
With large number of divestitures, employees really got lost in the process, and focus was lost.

Advice to Senior Management

Figure out what you want to do with the company. Is it a growth company, or a utility? Understand that 'people first' isn't always about compensation.

Pros

* Excellent technology exposure
* Great people; strong engineering discipline
* Strong management/leadership
* Supportive delegation-oriented management
* Excellent compensation
* Reasonable work-life balance

Cons

* The occasional overly aggressive sales commitment
* Unclear engineering career growth path
* Some challenges around managing the cross-functional organization effectively

Advice to Senior Management

* Too much divestiture? Shedding some of Stratton's half-baked content plays made sense but isn't shedding security services / identity protection service going too far?