Synapse Product Development Reviews

Pros

Synapse is filled with the smartest and most humble people I know. The work is interesting, dynamic and fast paced. It's a perfect environment for product geeks and those who want a lot of variety in their work.

Pros

Colleagues were cordial and management accessible

Advice to Management

It is hard to advice management when there is a revolving door up there

Pros

Great people and strong culture

Pros

Synapse is full of wonderful people, and can be a great place to work if you consider the location, work-life balance, and the company community. As some bullet points:

If it's something you haven't already done in your career, you will get useful experiences interacting with clients and vendors.
There will be smart people in your discipline you can learn something from if you happen to be on the same projects.
Most everyone is very friendly and willing to help you if you run into problems.

Advice to Management

Be constantly self-evaluating. It can be great to treat your employees like family, but let it be a family with a ruthless streak.

Pros

Very nice people, management that listens and acts. Cool tech, reaching for more, cautiously.

Advice to Management

Increase funding and support for technical growth.

Pros

Synapse sees and works on a lot of interesting consumer products so you get exposed to a diverse set of challenges and technologies. Many of the products are things you or people you know might use, which is fun.

The company values a 40 hour work week -- it's rare that people work more than that.

People are generally very friendly and fun to work with.

If you're someone who wants to cruise through the work day, make a reasonable salary, and have great work life balance Synapse is good place to be.

Advice to Management

Think about how create an organization with opportunities for career growth/advancement. Curb the animal house culture a bit.

Pros

Always changing job function, it never gets old

Pros

Constant supply of new and unique projects. One month you may be designing small electronics and the next you may be designing much larger mechanisms.

Pros

This is -the- best job I've ever had, hands down.
- My colleagues are smarter and more experienced than me and I am always absorbing as much as possible, yet no one ever acts superior or smug. It is a super supportive group that builds each other up.
- Management is responsive to issues raised, actually listening to and acting on what I have to say.
- Engineers have a voice in what projects they work on.
- The variety of projects is wide, leaving great options for what sort of designs to dive into.
- It's in SF, near CalTrain, AT&T park, walkable to transit, etc.
- We do fun stuff together as an organized office event at least once a month.
- I enjoy coming to work.
- My contributions are valued, and I get feedback.
- I feel fairly compensated.
- We work with Fortune 100 companies and startups, making things that are sure bets to come to market as well as pie in the sky hopefuls.

Advice to Management

Try to minimize the changes surrounding the acquisition by Cambridge Consultants!

Pros

The people and the family-like community at Synapse keep me coming back day after day. We attract quite a range of interesting clients and projects, and if I don't learn something here on any given day it's my own fault. People are always willing to share their knowledge and expertise, whether conversationally or in the form of documented design guides and best practices to help in future projects. Leadership is committed to hearing the good, bad, and ugly feedback about how things are going, and mostly address those elements head-on.

Advice to Management

- Give your people the tools they need to provide one another with real-time feedback, and help shepherd that cultural transition - it will take some time, but it needs a boost.
- Develop, present, and execute a cohesive business development strategy that shows you're looking for the kind of work your people are interested in, and not the same kinds of projects over and over again.
- Find a way to make your administrative folks a real part of the family. They are sometimes second-class citizens within the organization, yet they keep the business running in a very tangible and important way. All those who have a part in Synapse's success should be valued members of the family.