Autonomy Reviews

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

Pros – HP were able to break-up the kangaroo court that ran the company

Cons – Products only ever worked with considerable pro services.
Management tried to rule through intimidation.
Questionable ethics on contract negotiations.
Lots of forgotten promises.
Very few pre and post sales engineers.
A cut and run mentality on closing deals.

Advice to Senior Management – My advice to HP is to remove any senior sales management who have been in their roles for more than 3 years.
Get a decent CRM tool.
Get a price list that reps can quote from.
Get a proper pro services organization.
Question why you paid $10bn+ for such a sham of a company

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 full-time for more than a year

Pros – Good salary
Some very nice people
Good Christmas parties

Cons – Old school aggressive sales flogging tired tech that gets buggier and less stable with every release. There's no righting this ship Mr Youngjohns, give it up.

Advice to Senior Management – Hold your hands up and admit you're out your depth managing technical projects.

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

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

Pros – Some great technology and a few decent people have hung on and are to be commended for their perserverance. HP, if it sees it through, will create better possibilities but it will be a while to figure out how to do this - I wish them luck.

Cons – Absolutely the worst possible management culture imaginable; from top (mostly gone - and rightully so as the news will bear out) to bottom. Managers are used to lying to employees to get deals done with favored reps. Salesfolk hired for their rolodexes - once this is exhausted and they figure out they are selling questionable products/support and are jeopardizing their relationships and integrity (about 3-6 months in), they quit. Extremely caustic treatment and outright boldface lying to the very people who interface with the customer so customer satisfaction low and reputation shot. HP stuck trying to unwind this nettle of lies which is a shame because the people who represented some very fine products deserved better - but that wasn't the goal of Mike Lynch and company, was it?

Advice to Senior Management – Replace all levels of legacy Autonomy management and issue a public statement to existing customers that you will be in touch to introduce the HP way of doing of doing business; the customer-centric way. All should be removed to rid the culture of the toxic treatment of the customers and employees.

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 full-time for more than a year

Pros – Autonomy does have some outstanding software products that are good and provide value when they are installed and configured correctly.....

Very nice co-workers that will try to help you

Cons – *Senior leadership does not care about the satisfaction of their customers.
*They acquire companies, integrate their IDOL technology, significantly reduce the development and support staff, but increase the sales force too large and very few sales people make any good money.
*Terrible customer support
* Sales leadership regularly in group meetings unprofessionally tears sales reps apart verbally.... a real team moral killer.
* The fastest revolving door of good sales people that I have ever witnessed.
* Sales leadership is very direct and aggressive about driving the sales teams to just close the business, take the money and run, whether the customer will benefit from the software or not.
* Many unhappy customers who admit that after they purchased the software they felt abandoned.
*Senior leadership only focused on selling the business to cash out which they did to HP who I believe will regret their decision

Advice to Senior Management – HP management needs to completely clean house of all senior leadership and completely clean house of all sales leadership and sales managers. They all need to go as soon as possible.

The market for their products does not support the size of their current sales staff headcount which needs to be reduced by at least 50% to allow those that remain to make a living.

Reinvest in technical support teams to improve customer satisfaction

Reinvest in product development to update some of the products which are getting rather old in the tooth from a technology perspective.

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

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

Pros – Market leading compensation rates - realistic top tier was around 15% commission (on $500k+ worth of deals in a single Q).

Cons – No sales support, awful CRM, management and sales reps treated as commodities. Churn and burn environment. NO account ownership - every account is up for grabs, and you'd spend 1/2 your time or more fending off other reps trying to sell the same product to your accounts - potentially from across the country.

Advice to Senior Management – Enable sales, don't treat them like useless mindless monkeys.

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 full-time for less than a year

Pros – Technology is unreal. Good comp plan.

Cons – No territories and very few and very reluctant technical resources.

Advice to Senior Management – Structure the sales model and hire and train pre-sales tech resources.

No, I would not recommend this company to a friend

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

Pros – they'll hire just about anybody

Cons – sham of a company, as evidenced by the inevitable fallout that has come after the HP acquisition put an end to the phony management. little of real value here, but amazing salesmanship.

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

Current Employee – been working at Autonomy full-time

Pros – Free Friday Lunch, great co-worker

Cons – Bad Management, and bad management

No, I would not recommend this company to a friend

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

Pros – Came for aggressive comp plan and thought I knew about the culture walking into this role but boy was I was wrong. It was everything and more and that's not good.

Cons – Everything you've read about this company is 100% true. Win at all costs is the motto here. Do anything/say anything to get the deal and let someone else worry about the customer satisfaction.

Advice to Senior Management – Now that HP owns the company I'm sure the toxic culture is being driven out of the Autonomy organization. To the current and former Autonomy management team, check your ego at the door, treat people like you want to be treated, and be honest (to your employees and your customers).

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 full-time for more than a year

Pros – Broad product offering, good technology mix

Cons – Horrible culture, run through fear and intimidation.

Advice to Senior Management – Be more positive, use the carrot more then the stick