Autonomy Reviews

Former Employee – worked at Autonomy

Pros – There's free food in the kitchen and a holiday abroad at Christmas. The company also sponsors a Formula One team, so you might be lucky and get to go to a free practice session. They also sponsor Tottenham Hotspur, so you might be able to go and watch a match.

Oh, there's also a table football game. Because that will cancel out the cons, right?

Cons – As a graduate, do not expect any training. In fact, do not expect very much other than to be placed in front of a PC and given orders! Chances are you will be working alone on some horrific code base that no-one else in the company understands. Good luck with that.

You'll need to learn on the job and under pressure and you will be expected to delivery results however much of your day/night this costs. Most of the projects continually operate in fire-fighting mode because the number of developers is very low. No-one ever has the chance to sit back and say "hey, wouldn't it be better if we changed this bit and did it properly" because they have to fix the bugs TODAY or face a shouting match from superiors.

Software is very much secondary to Autonomy. The goal is sales. Software just gets in the way. This means no emphasis in design, documentation or testing. Or in other words, no value to software guys/gals whatsoever. As a software engineer you are regarded as a button pusher, you have no skill and any software engineer can be replaced by any other (or indeed a new graduate). If you want to become a better software developer, simply don't start here (or come here and then write a book on how not to do things).

Learning on the job is hampered by the firewall. China's censorship policies have nothing on Autonomy. Want to downloads some open-source software? No chance! Want to read documentation? No chance! Do you want to read a blog article explaining your problem? Nope, you're out of luck. The firewall blocks almost everything to the point where you might as well just bring books in and use that. The internet is vastly overrated anyway!

Management can best be characterized as arrogant and technically incompetent. Whatever you can do, they can do better and in half the time. They'll not demonstrate this, but they will use it to try and force you to finish items very quickly, often pressurising you into working very late.

I'll stop there because it says "describe some of the downsides". There's plenty more, but suffice to say this isn't a place I would recommend to others (or my worst enemy for that matter!).

Advice to Senior Management – There's no hope. You can't build a company on the lie of great software when the core is so totally rotten.

No, I would not recommend this company to a friend

Former Employee – worked at Autonomy

Pros – Cambridge is a great city
Some bright folk that have been conned into working here for a short while
Great sewage work smells
If you have chav tastes you will be well catered for with football tickets avaible at Spurs

Cons – Exceptionally poor company to be an employee
Sweat shop style
Thoroughly dislikeable management
Feel like a con worker
All the disadvantages of a start up with few of the benefits

Advice to Senior Management – Get out before the sham is exposed

No, I would not recommend this company to a friend

Former Employee – worked at Autonomy

Pros – They pay well. They know it's all that keeps you there.
Technology has a good story, but has failed to move on.

Cons – Agressive Microso management with no respect or empathy for staff.
The software has a good story but as they increase product range through acquisition Rand D is suffering in favour of gluing products together.
Customer care is non-existant.
Software is rarely deployed past a pilot.

Advice to Senior Management – Everyone who works or has worked at Autonomy knows what has to change and who has to go......make the changes before the market changes it's mind. You're only one bad quarter away from what you deserve !

No, I would not recommend this company to a friend

Former Employee – worked at Autonomy

Pros – Free food on Friday.
Thats it.

Cons – The management tend to bully workers, have no concept of how difficult a project is and demand unreasonable timetables.
If you complain about a manager, they close ranks and effectively force you out.
They contact your doctors to query your illness, so their is no trust there at all.
Software is a unholy mess with little in the way of comments or documentation.
The workplace is literally a sweatshop, especially in summer. Air conditioning is reserved for managers and guests.
Their legal minions threaten you if you speak out against the company.
They check when you enter and leave the building. They don't care if you start work 15 or 30 minutes early, but raise hell if you leave 5 minutes early.
They expect you to work till demanding hours, and to hell with your social life.

Advice to Senior Management – Start afresh. Get rid of the managers and hire a new team with new ideas.

No, I would not recommend this company to a friend

Current Employee – been working at Autonomy

Pros – Other nice people in your situation to compare bad experiences with.
Tea coffee biscuits.

Cons – Where to start... Well the main issues start and end at the top. It all began as a start-up company in a single office. A place where the founders could watch over every project person and bark orders accordingly. This is where the bad management ethic began. You were expected to work hard to push the company places in the vain hope you would be part of the success. Unfortunately this ethic has stayed in the bigger corporation. All efforts from employees are watched over, taken over and unrewarded... Select people take all the credit and effectively bully the workforce who are frozen out in a static dead end position. The result is a very high employee turnover and a company reaching crisis point through lack of ideas from the powerless disillusioned workforce pushed along by a power crazed CEO. Customers are often misled and analysis are starting to smell a rat.

Advice to Senior Management – Stop... re-assess... Look at what you have and try and build from that. So much potential is overlooked and the technology could be great, but everything is so rushed and people so downtrodden it is wasted. Good luck, but it may be time to sell up and let an experience team take the company places.

No, I would not recommend this company to a friend

Former Employee – worked at Autonomy

Pros – Good place to learn every single aspect of search technology. In fact, EXCELLENT for this! And instills good work ethic as they demand so much.

Cons – Say bye, bye to your life, and hello to always feeling like you're failing!

Advice to Senior Management – I think they know...

No, I would not recommend this company to a friend

Former Employee – worked at Autonomy

Pros – Basic package is good, other employees friendly and free lunch on a Friday. Once you've worked the place out you can get by.

Cons – Unfortunately the employees who have managed to endure it for years are so poorly treated they now see this as the norm and thus new employees are treated the same. Working conditions, equipment, training and moral are appalling. The complete management team treat everyone with distrust and insist on archaic sales practices which basically involve bullying and micromanagement of the sales teams which is deemed as the only way to run the company. Employees are also told to always say yes to customers even when the products are unsuitable or don’t even exist, not a nice position to be in if your customer facing and have any integrity at all. The ‘C’ level executives take great pleasure in informing new employees that “if they don’t perform then you won’t be here very long” and these threats continue throughout your working life. I’m lucky in the fact that I’ve been around the block, the poor graduate’s that they work like dogs and pay minimal salaries don’t know any better and are quite happy to fly to Miami (via most obscure and painful routes possible) and share a hotel room with a complete stranger (who’s just as depressed about the situation he’s in as you are) for a weekend of “aren’t we great” at which the leading ‘performers’, you can spot them, the technical employee of the year – Young, clever, hasn’t been home for 8 months, twitchy, nervous, needs a bath – gets a bottle of fizzy wine and a weekend in rehab! Nice touch. Don’t go near this place it’s an empty hole full of the people that either can’t get other jobs or don’t know any better.

Advice to Senior Management – Sell out and replace with competent senior management team who can drive the company forward to the next level. Constant acquisition to ‘keep the wheel spinning’ is a strategy that can only fail given the current blinkered attitudes and approach to solution selling and determination to succeed at whatever cost.

No, I would not recommend this company to a friend

Current Employee – been working at Autonomy

Pros – Diverse range of products, and wide variety of customers.
Lots of travelling, offers a good lifestyle for people who manage their time.
People seem to be compensated well.

Cons – Lots of travelling.
A lot of the skills you need have to be picked up on the spot, and quite a bit of improvisation is needed to complete the task.

Advice to Senior Management – Make sure training for the necessary work is given before deploying projects, this will allow the project to be completed to higher standards.

Yes, I would recommend this company to a friend

Current Employee – been working at Autonomy

Pros – Not very PC I know! But its both true that its great technology and that there is a great deal of pressure to succeed at every level. The rewards for the successful and hard working are significant and the opportunities for where this gig could go are immense, but the problems come when everyone thinks THEY are the hard working ones (and aren't) in which case its pretty unforgiving.

Cons – Its not a perfect world but this seems to sort out the men from the boys. Choose wisely and know you're strengths.

Advice to Senior Management – Its a big mistake not to publicise rewards more internally. Need better internal comms. Having said that, the fundamentals are the right ones so these are relatively minor concerns.

Yes, I would recommend this company to a friend

Current Employee – been working at Autonomy

Pros – Great opportunities, steep learning curve, excellent senior management, dynamic environment and the people are great - some of the best in the industry.

Cons – This is not the place for someone passive, if you don't get a response to an email, just escalate. Don't sit around thinking it is not your responsibility just because you didn't hear back. This is actually a pro as I dislike reactive behavior.

Advice to Senior Management – Communicating the rules more openly would help new employees adjust more easily.

Yes, I would recommend this company to a friend