Autonomy Reviews

Former Employee – worked at Autonomy full-time for more than 7 years

Pros – None
No good benefits
No commendations

Cons – Senior skilled employees are treated as fresh graduates And paid peanuts

Advice to Senior Management – Be generous and reward your best employees and you may be able to retain them

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

Pros – It has a good bonus scheme, and the people there were some of the nicest I've worked with.

Cons – Awful base salary. I've heard of people not getting raises there, but I managed to get one. That said, it wasn't a very good raise, and it took for me to leave the company to get it.
Awful management
Awful software development practice
No clear career routes
Sales driven, no care or pride taken in products created

Advice to Senior Management – Take some pride in the work you produce, and considering your a multi billion software company, get some proper software development practices hammered in to your employees!

No, I would not recommend this company to a friend

Current Employee – been working at Autonomy full-time for more than a year

Pros – Christmas party, which they are plan on removing this year. Decent bonus, generally nice working environment. Free food on Fridays and drinks everyday

Cons – The management never seem to know what's going on down below. The only way to get a pay rise is to quit. The hard work pays off in the short tern, rarely in the long term. Difficult to advance due the the cosy management in place.

Advice to Senior Management – Don't break promises (raises, visa, travel). You are working you employees to death. Manage your projects better, quality not quantity.

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

Pros – Since the directors quit a couple of months ago things have got much better here. Plus the web filter that stopped us getting to a load of websites has gone and the dress code is casual at last.

But the best thing about being here is the rest of the dev team who are great guys and you learn loads from each other.

Cons – Though the former directors were the cause of most of the negativity here we could still probably do with some new ones so I hope someone's looking.

Yes, I would recommend this company to a friend

Current Employee – been working at Autonomy full-time

Pros – Getting paid to arrive in work when i feel like it, play pool or stand around chatting whilst drinking free coffee, having been given any direction in weeks no one seems to know what's going on.

Cons – The departure of Mike Lynch and he vision he was the reason i joined Autonomy.

Advice to Senior Management – Most employees i speak to have already placed their CV's with recruiters.

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

Former Employee – worked at Autonomy

Pros – The main focus of the company is to sell, not to develop good quality software. The whole production and sales is governed by a "Let's sell it ASAP, we (may) fix it later" mentality.
Mid-managers are inadequate, they over micro-manage their team members (I call it nano-management).

They are strict about work hours: they record people's arrival and check out times every day. Phone calls are recorded, email communication and internet traffic is monitored heavily. Access to personal email services and many other sites is not allowed by their firewall. I once attempted to access a personal email domain of mine, which the filter did not permit to my surprise. Only a couple minutes later, as I was going downstairs I saw the page I tried to access (my email domain web site bearing my personal logo) in front of the company's Chief Operation Officer!

The HR is inadequate, too: They didn't bother asking me why I was leaving at my exit interview! In fact, they are not aware that the three people (from the same group) who left before me, and the person who resigned after me did so because of the same problem/person. Unfortunately they are not aware that the cause of many of the problems in the company are their control-freak group leaders who are not aware of any modern-day management techniques.

There is no concept of trust in the company. For example, I report a problem to my group leader, he goes to someone else to challenge my claim, treating me like a potential liar in front of everybody, and despite I end up being correct I never get an apology for the shouting and lack of trust. I use a mobile phone to check my emails while getting a coffee outside of the office room, he gets angry and tells me "if you continue to use your phone I will take you to the HR". Very laughable indeed. It was me who went to the HR to resign in the end :) You can't run a company with terror like this, even if you do so you can't expect these qualified people to work for you. Qualified people are hard to find, and they can easily find (better) jobs somewhere else!

Cons – Free lunches, nice Christmas trips every year.

Advice to Senior Management – Don't be afraid to get rid of some of your team leaders! Regularly give negative (if any) and as well as positive feedback to employees. Also get some regular feedback from employees! Don't wait for the exit interviews for that (which are useless at the moment). Improve your bonus scheme and benefits to please your developers.

No, I would not recommend this company to a friend

Current Employee – been working at Autonomy

Pros – free lunch in the canteen each day, free ice cream in the summer, weekend abroad in plush hotel for a christmas party, friendly and helpful colleagues on the shop floor.

Cons – No support or guidance from management- they ignore you entirely for large stretches before swooping in without warning to berate and patronise you. No documentation for any code- all in the heads of others, who while generally helpful are too highly strung and busy with their own work; sales is everything, quality not even an after thought - just so long as the sales rep can blag it past the client. Churn and burn of graduates who are about 90% of their developers- constant stream of people leaving after 9-18 months.

Advice to Senior Management – Provide support and feedback to your employees. Stop treating them like drones in a sweatshop.

No, I would not recommend this company to a friend

Current Employee – been working at Autonomy

Pros – Starting salary is good, though don't expect it to go up.
Free meals and a good christmas party

Cons – Long hours, no appreciation.
Are expected to put the extra untold (unpaid) hours in, week in week out.
management are so sales driven that they can only focus on the end of the week
no thought towards the future
things have only gotten worse since the acquisition by HP

Advice to Senior Management – Treat your staff better, or they'll all leave, and since the entire company is in the head of a select few developers, you'd do well to try and keep them.

No, I would not recommend this company to a friend

Former Employee – worked at Autonomy

Pros – Good colleagues among the other engineers, free lunches, better salary than at some other places, that's about all I can think of.

Cons – No communication from senior management; my immediate manager's manager never once spoke to me in all the years I was there. No performance reviews, and my written request for a pay rise after some years there was not even acknowledged, let alone refused. Strict hours of work; you have to be there between 9.30 and 6.00, never mind whether you have family or other commitments, and working from home is not allowed. The top floor was usually unbearably hot (well above the World Health Organization recommended limit) throughout the summer and management's response was not to do anything to remedy the situation but just to send an ice cream van to the front door every afternoon. A dispiriting, soul-destroying place to work.

Advice to Senior Management – Treat your engineers as human beings, not just coding machines.

No, I would not recommend this company to a friend

Current Employee – been working at Autonomy

Pros – Reasonable compensation if your prepared to have no life
Nice colleagues
Some capable upper management

Cons – - Terrible, incompetent middle management. The best pre-sales/tech have left leaving those who were average to push the pencils. Some have never experienced anything else than Autonomy and are incredibly blinkered.
- churn and burn culture with grads
- Virtually no QA
- projects delivered ad-hoc with slaves/graduates
- unreasonable hours
- zero training
- zero respect
- poor quality software - try and find a working version of introspect/eas/digital safe/etc.
- over marketed software (bordering on propaganda)
- lies/deceit to unsatisfied customers
- graduates are clueless as have no guidance - experience is irrelevant in engineering i suppose?
- rushed software for sales based culture
- zero communication (especially for non UK offices)

Advice to Senior Management – Clear out middle management
Pray customers dont start asking for references

No, I would not recommend this company to a friend