Websense Reviews in San Diego, CA Area

Current Employee – been working at Websense full-time for more than 3 years

Pros – Company pays average to above average for a San Diego tech company
Proabably a good place to move into management
Company makes an effort not to sell too, support, or allow oppressive governments to use products
Some good managers doing there best

Cons – HR department is cheap, lazy, and doesn't even pretend to care about employees
Other than ESPP program, and free bagels on Friday, Websense offers no copmany wide employee or engineering department wide perks
It is a software company that is very sales focused
Heavily outsourced engineering means painful and slow development process
Heavy construction around the building makes commuting more painful

Advice to Senior Management – Spend more $ on company "events' or don't have them at all.
Telling us to volunteer for causes that HR people think are important isn't a perk.
Bring Engineering back to the USA and focus on overall product quality vs short term sales. Agile will not work with development teams scattered around the world (and no, HP is not a good example!).
Get a discount on the building lease for the 3+ year construction projects

Yes, I would recommend this company to a friend

Current Employee – been working at Websense full-time for more than 3 years

Pros – Free donuts and bagels once a week.

Friendly co-workers considering the amount of stress and problems that exists in the support department.

Cons – The Technical Support workforce is severely understaffed. The tenured techs receive no form of compensation for their dedication or hard work outside of an email that is sent out recognizing the amount of time they have spent with the company, which only happens once you've been there half a decade.

As an engineer you are held to completely unrealistic expectations in regards to work load and are constantly receiving the worst end of the stick from customers who don't understand how severely understaffed the workforce is.

The management in Technical Support is literally useless. They have no means, methods, or desire to assist their subordinates in any way. There is no interaction outside of a weekly team meeting which consists of the most redundant useless information you could imagine. They fail to prioritize anything correctly and never back up or assist engineers in any way, constantly shrugging work and responsibility with complete apparent disdain to any and all problems.

A quarterly bonus that was promised and rightfully earned was disregarded and not issued due to a clerical error, but the company still refused to own up to the error and compensate those who had earned their bonuses.

Advice to Senior Management – Instead of hiring on brand new engineers who have never even touched Websense software before at higher salary and position, you should look to satisfy the needs of the techs who have been keeping the support department afloat with their sheer knowledge and dedication to the product and company.

Cut the fat in middle management. There are far too many support managers that do far too little and it is painfully obvious to the engineers that work under them. These managers berate their technicians with unrealistic expectations in regards to how they provide support while at the same time tying their hands to do anything properly.

Find managers that actually know how to run teams in an engaged and positive way. The managers in support currently separate themselves from engineers in every way possible. They lock themselves in their offices with the door shut, have their IM status as DND or Busy constantly, and are never available to help you with anything. A typical response to a cry for help is to ask someone else.

Revamp review standards. Management has openly recognized that we are severely understaffed and overworked, yet when review time comes around management always feeds the engineers a completely different line about why a raise or promotion is not available. Most have figured out already that if you want a promotion or a raise you have to threaten to quit or have another job offer in hand, which some middle management has done to get to where they are currently. This is no way for a company to operate.

No, I would not recommend this company to a friend

Former Employee – worked at Websense full-time for more than a year

Pros – Good place early in your career.
Exposure to lots of technology.
Flexible schedules.

Cons – Non-competitive product.
Languishing incomplete customer installations.
Success metrics not tied into actual work load.

Advice to Senior Management – Redo the metrics.
Allocate resources to fix the long term incomplete installations.

No, I would not recommend this company to a friend – I'm not optimistic about the outlook for this company

Current Employee – been working at Websense full-time for more than 3 years

Pros – Excellent technologies and opportunities for acquiring new skills, including paying for training. Departments are kept small so you have a chance to wear many hats in your position. Nice office space and equipment. Lunch cart on site with running tabs. Most employees are friendly.

Cons – Rare promotions and compensations. Almost every department will state there aren't enough people to even do quality work. Management believes if the employees haven't quit, there isn't a problem so problems only are addressed when brought up in the exit interviews. Questionable management styles from top level executives lead to a culture where acquiescence to the norm and saying "yes" to your manager is valued overall.

Advice to Senior Management – This is a technology company and it would only benefit the company to treat employees as assets. This could improve morale and motivate more employees to work on improving the company and would e much more effective than the occasional free lunch or free donuts.

No, I would not recommend this company to a friend – I'm not optimistic about the outlook for this company

Current Employee – been working at Websense full-time for more than 3 years

Pros – Even though Websense is a large corporation, the labs still feel like a startup. We always are working on new projects. These projects are not just what the top-brass want us to do, they are also ideas that we have. Many of these projects become customer facing.

I personally feel that I have been able to make a lasting positive (hopefully) impact on the company.

We get to work directly with the researchers on projects which is fun as well.

Cons – Websense is an enterprise company not a consumer company so sometimes it feels out of sync.

They have been around for a while, so some of the code base is old and annoying. (But we do get opportunities to fix it :D )

There is a lack of standards (coding, architecture, protocols, etc) which makes developing frustrating.

Advice to Senior Management – We need a clearer vision.

Yes, I would recommend this company to a friend – I'm optimistic about the outlook for this company

Current Employee – been working at Websense full-time for more than 3 years

Pros – I've been working in Websense Labs for the past 4 years. The Labs is fairly isolated from the rest of the company so I can't comment much about what happens outside of Labs. Looking at some of the reviews - it seems that some departments have issues. However, that is not the case in Labs.

We use a wide array of modern technologies and have the independence to make vital technical decisions. The work is interesting, typically large scale and has a great impact on the company. I've done work spanning from mobile security on iPhone/Android to a Web Service API that receives ~2 billion requests per day.

Another benefit is the Work/Life balance. The work with Labs allows me to leave at normal expected times, like you expect at most Enterprises. However Labs is small enough to have a startup feel - with plenty of games for breaks (pool, pong, foosball)

The biggest pro would be the product suite that Labs is responsible for. We regularly communicate with large customers and work with them to produce some of the best security technology available. If you want to work on stuff that matters and with extremely high data requirements you will be happy!

Another nice perk is the travel. We have offices near London and in Beijing both great places to travel to.

Cons – I could be making more elsewhere (I hear this is being fixed.. we will see)
C level team seem to floundering and have trouble communicating vision

Advice to Senior Management – We all understand sales is a major component. But that is really for you and the Sales group to talk indepth about. Broaden your quarterly takes and address vision and the future

Yes, I would recommend this company to a friend – I'm optimistic about the outlook for this company

Current Employee – been working at Websense full-time

Pros – Very secure employment. Solid engineering.

Cons – Salaries are low. Workload and pressure are too high.

Advice to Senior Management – Hire more people. You can't keep putting more work on fewer people. Reduce the amount of work going on in Beijing and hire Americans.

Yes, I would recommend this company to a friend

Current Employee – been working at Websense full-time

Pros – You will have a wide range of responsibilities in your role and have the ability to learn whatever you want, if you have the drive and ambition.

You'll work with bright, intelligent people.

Good benefits. Great health/dental insurance, vacation package.

Cons – People are overworked. Teams are hiring in abroad offices but not locally. Everyone at the company is stretched thin and there aren't enough resources to build features the right way. Almost every project I've worked on has been forced to readjust schedule in a big way due to lack of planning and foresight.

Incredibly negative politics. Managers are more interested in carving out their own power bases than building good product. People are afraid to share their opinions to executive management. There is a chronic lack of appreciation for the incredible amount of work done by people. There is a distinct negative relationship between organizational groups and between different offices.

Compensation is not competitive over time. Small raises, no bonuses, rare promotions all designed to keep costs down.

Advice to Senior Management – Hire more people in engineering. We are completely overworked, underpaid, are given little attention and have middle management who care more about protecting themselves than product. Pay more attention to project state and help lift some weight off our shoulders. Also, stop flaunting the benefits and investment done in Sales, you make everyone else in the company feel horrible from what we get compared to them.

No, I would not recommend this company to a friend – I'm not optimistic about the outlook for this company

Current Employee – been working at Websense full-time for less than a year

Pros – Great culture, work/life balance and good benefits. I've had the opportunity to workwith some very talented people, and also I love the technology! My position may be unique in having visibility into a lot of different areas, and I like the direction that the company is headed.

Cons – Sure, Websense has its challenges like any company. I've worked at some rough companies, bit and small. I can say that no problem I've seen here is insurmountable and that the leadership I work with daily (several VP's and above) is working diligently to tackle the issues one by one. That means more to me than what the issues are individually.

Advice to Senior Management – The only thing I could really think of is to foster more collaboration with internal teams. There are some outstanding ideas from people in a lot of different groups on how to improve products, process, etc. Let's start gathering and planting those seeds!

Yes, I would recommend this company to a friend – I'm optimistic about the outlook for this company

Current Employee – been working at Websense full-time for more than 8 years

Pros – Talented people - most are great to work with. I happen to be fortunate and work on a good team with a good manager. Lots of challenging work - I've never been bored in the years I have been here.

Cons – There is no guiding philosophy of treating/cultivating the workforce at Websense, so your experience completely depends on which team you work on or manager you have. Management seems to place such high merit in folks who give up their personal lives including time with their families for the greater good of the company. That just makes me sad. Once in a while when the need is there, step up...no problem. But that should not be the regular pace.

Advice to Senior Management – Encourage top down to value employees - it not only inspires and motivates, but it also serves to retain company knowledge versus watch them walk out the door. Protect the work/life balance and we will be more grateful and loyal.

Yes, I would recommend this company to a friend