Liferay Reviews

Pros

The people and mission are great!

Cons

Still figuring out the balance of freedom and community post-pandemic.

Pros

The teams mesh pretty well and work together in a collaborative spirit. Middle management works to help direct and train staff to build up skills, but only on an as-needed basis. There were many times when we were thrust into tickets that we were not equipped to handle. I can see that the middle managers are trying. Escalation workflow has improved in the past 5 years.

Cons

Pay is on the lower side and it isn't easy to reach the next pay grade as perf reviews feel arbitrary and not really grounded. Senior and executive management feels out of touch with employees. Certain policies that aren't too popular are upheld. Feedback sessions are held, but overridden by senior management's decision because it seems like they know best. A bit paternalistic, I think. Lately the management have been trying to roll out a PC standardization policy that border on "technofascism" with half-hearted concerns for employee ergonomics. I do not want to go too much in detail about this. I understand the need to secure our internal systems, feedback regarding usability and employee work styles are heard, but seldom considered or implemented.

Pros

Remote work, flexible hours a plus, casual environment. Decent place to work for short term or stepping stone. Decent work/life balance, decent benefits. Small teams, coworkers are nice & good to work with. Team members value each other's opinions etc. Lots of people who are very passionate about what they do.

Cons

Not great communication from HR/upper management. Sometimes hard to get a straight answer to questions, a lot of decisions are made without any communication to the rest of the company until the changes are already "locked in". Lack of transparency/good reasons behind decision making. Lots of work silos lead to redundancies, miscommunication, delays/conflict between teams. If you're a new or low level employee, your ideas and feedback are usually ignored. They listen to employees who have been there longer, even when they don't know or care about industry trends and standards. Not terrible if you're fine just doing your job, not improving the company/product as a whole. I did the work of a higher level job but they told me they couldn't promote me to that job title, and no raise in pay to compensate. They talk a lot about values, ex. "value people" / "grow & get better", but their decisions and work culture don't always match. Huge lack of growth and diversity in the company. Teams value team members and try support them, but don't get support from upper management.

Pros

There are very few software companies in the suburbs of Diamond Bar. The coworkers here are very helpful and kind. It's a good place to start in the industry.

Cons

Company goals aren't always clear and deadlines are sometimes pushed and promised by higher ups without a clear path already defined at the engineering level for the feasibility of meeting those deadlines. The team is expanding in other parts of the world, i.e. Brazil, so the US branch is pretty empty, and only getting emptier.

Pros

* Very flexible work-from-home policy. * Good sense of work-life balance. * The company has an "employee volunteer program", which is really nice and shows that they have good values. Employees get a week's worth of time off each year (in addition to regular PTO) specifically to do a volunteer or community service project of your choosing. * The company has offices all over the globe, and depending on your role or team, you could find yourself working with colleagues from all around the world.

Cons

* The pay is subpar compared to the industry standard. This is exacerbated by the fact that it is a private company, so they don't offer equity like many other tech companies. * The flagship product is extremely buggy because the Chief Software Architect prioritizes velocity far above code quality. And now for the main reason I was motivated to write this review, which cannot be summarized in a bullet point: The Chief Software Architect has decided to dictate to an extreme degree exactly how his employees must perform their duties. He is trying to force a standardized laptop on everyone which has many bizarre and unnecessary restrictions on it, including: * No Taskbar may be used on the machine. * No additional monitor may be used (you can plug it into an external monitor, but you are only allowed to duplicate the displays, not extend them). * The Caps Lock and Ctrl key must be swapped from their default positions. He insists (without good reason) that these restrictions will make everybody more productive in the long run. When some employees attempted to give feedback to him, explaining why some of us find a second monitor or a taskbar useful, he simply continued to double down and did not seem to be listening to the feedback. Eventually after there was enough of an outcry about this, he decided that roughly 5% of the employees, whom he considered exceptional, would be allowed to bypass all these restrictions. But the remaining 95% of employees, whom he considers "unexceptional", would still have these restrictions forced on them. The means by which he determines whether someone is exceptional is merely up to his subjective opinion, and anyone whose work is not visible to him doesn't seem to have any chance of making it into this exceptional group no matter how competent they are. Most of us, especially those of us who do solid work but were labelled in the unexceptional group, find these restrictions to be extremely condescending. The Chief Software Architect's reasoning behind them basically communicates, "I know better than you do about how to do your job, and you need me to micromanage you to a very extreme degree in order for you to work efficiently". If you hire on as a Liferay Engineer at this time, you will given one of these intentionally constrained laptops to work with. You will have less of a chance of proving your worth and making it into the exceptional group who can bypass these restrictions, because you've been given an inadequate tool with which to do your job. Therefore, I cannot in good conscience recommend that any engineer choose to work at Liferay at this point in time. If the executive leadership team rescinds this policy regarding the laptops, then I will edit this review.

Pros

* People are generally selfless

Cons

* The work place is extremely set in stone and its hard to deliver impactful change * no leadership to care about frontend

Pros

Good work life balance overall

Cons

No career growth, pay too low

Pros

Great teamwork and there’s always someone ready to assist you.

Cons

None that I know of.

Pros

I absolutely love working with my team - my peers are awesome, and my manager is phenomenal.

Cons

Executive leadership often gets yanked around by the impulsive decisions made by the Chief Software Architect, who frequently meddles in the minutia.

Pros

A very good place to work with a very stable business model and great culture.

Cons

No real cons comes to mind