Filter
Filter
Full-timePart-timeSun respected their employee Work-Life balance (in 126 reviews)
Great people, excellent work environment (in 86 reviews)
Oracle bought Sun ;-( because Sun senior management didn't know how to run a business (in 77 reviews)
The company does no longer exist (in 14 reviews)
I worked at Sun Microsystems full-time (More than 3 years)
Pros
Sun gave the world many great technologies, NFS, Java, NIS, NIS+, Solaris, and so on. They were quite ahead of their time in a lot of respects. Sun respected their employee Work-Life balance. Even going as far as to tell people to take time off and stop working.
The environment was wonderful, great technology, great people, a very positive atmosphere. Office floor plan had several different area that you could work in depending on the task you had to accomplish. Individual pods when you needed to focus and work on a task. Larger team collaboration rooms for several employees to talk, share ideas and collaborate on things. Smaller spaces for smaller teams or for managers to have confidential one-on-one meetings. The bigger campuses even had "drop in areas" for visiting employees to be able to get a desk and do some work.
And above all, this company's motto was "The Network is the Computer" which rings so true now with Cloud Computing.
Employees were also required (at least in my role) to take a minimum of two training classes a year, one in hardware and one in software. I haven't been at a company since that has put so much into their employees with respect to training.
Would totally recommend the old Sun to people. But can't anymore since the Oracle acquisition.
Cons
* Couldn't market their products
* In-consistent approach on Solaris x86. Had they not ignored it / killed it / reanimated it as much as they did, perhaps Linux wouldn't have completely ate its lunch
* Inconsistent hiring into job levels... aka a less experienced person got hired into a higher ranked role than someone already performing well in a lower ranked role. (Think being hired as an L3 and the L2 has much more experience.)
* Not able to sell their technology well
* Glut of servers on the market from the dot com bust... really hurt sales of new systems.
* Was ahead of their time, and thus was acquired before being able to really make waves with Cloud Computing.
Advice to Management
Pony Tailed CEO was a mistake, shouldn't have changed captains in the storm.
Being Sold to Oracle was another mistake, but I blame pony tail for that misstep.
I have been working at Sun Microsystems full-time (More than 3 years)
Pros
Work/life balance, management listens to you
Cons
Salary can be little competitive
Advice to Management
N/A
I worked at Sun Microsystems full-time
Pros
It was a great place to work, with great technology and interesting projects.
Cons
Had hard time taking great technologies and monetizing.
I worked at Sun Microsystems full-time
Pros
leading edge technologies large so functions are clearly defined
Cons
silos between groups culture need to encourage info sharing more
Advice to Management
keep employees engaged
I have been working at Sun Microsystems full-time (More than 10 years)
Pros
Leveraged variety of experiences in problem resolutions
Cons
Diversification in overall in problem resolution
Advice to Management
Very open minded
I worked at Sun Microsystems full-time
Pros
Great products, great leadership and team building
Cons
Sadly, the company wasn't able to go into the next generation (aka cloud)
I worked at Sun Microsystems full-time
Pros
great for learning at this place
Cons
sun is set for good
I have been working at Sun Microsystems full-time
Pros
Decent working hours most of the time.
Cons
No growth prospects for ever.
I worked at Sun Microsystems full-time (More than 10 years)
Pros
It was great until suddenly it wasn't anymore
Cons
Senior management never saw the threats to their business model
I worked at Sun Microsystems full-time (More than a year)
Pros
Great benefits, technically challenging, world class software
Cons
Competing projects - "plant a thousand seeds, pick the prettiest flower"
This will replace the current featured review for targeted profile. Are you sure you want to replace it?
Are you sure you want to remove this review from being featured for targeted profile?
Sun Microsystems Response
seconds ago
Edit • Delete