Blinkx Reviews

Former Employee – worked at Blinkx

Pros – an interesting techonology that has a lot of promise
opportunity to get in early in the online video search space

Cons – paranoid executives micromanage ineffectively
no recognition of talent
childish vindictive and manipulative actions
lacking self-confidence, management projects their own shortcomings onto their employees

Advice to Senior Management – respect and reward your talent or they will walk away
have a business strategy and plan accordingly
establish core values and communicate them
communicate with your employees
don't think that you are above QA, documentation, and thoughtful planning
treat employees fairly
instead of blaming your employees, take a self-inventory

No, I would not recommend this company to a friend

Former Employee – worked at Blinkx

Pros – I found the company a challenging and fast paced environment to work in. With new projects constantly coming up and very much at the leading edge of what technology can offer in this space.

Cons – Being a fast paced industry means that on the down side the place can be a little caotic or manic, some days crazy. You also have to scream to be heard and sometimes your voice drowns.

Advice to Senior Management – Listen to the troops and be less quick in dismissing their thoughts. some great material comes from us and can make the company more successful. Also communicate more.

Yes, I would recommend this company to a friend

Former Employee – worked at Blinkx

Pros – Fast paced, great co-workers, interesting projects. Can make an impact to the direction of the company if you are willing to put in the effort.

Cons – Total lack of respect from management. Lots of mis-truths, white lies, broken promises, public humiliation, indeifference, lack of leadership and indecision.

Advice to Senior Management – Show some respect.

No, I would not recommend this company to a friend

Former Employee – worked at Blinkx

Pros – Amazing location.
Fair compensation.
Friendly coworkers.
Stimulating work in the field of scalability and data aggregation.
High employee turnover means you can probably get a job there without much difficulty. Might be able to get a referral bonus if you could convince a friend to work there for a year. They might not be your friend anymore afterward, though.

Cons – A complete lack of transparency on any level. Management would commit to specific deadlines long in advance but not tell engineering until days before. Maybe it was a motivational tactic; always keep your employees near an impending crisis and they'll work harder. Just promoted confusion and stress.

No visible product roadmap. Products, to the extent that there were any, were specced out on the spot by looming managers. No one had any idea what we'd be working on the next week let alone the next month. Much more time was put into the press release schedule than the engineering schedule.

Loud, bullpen-style office. No separation between PR, engineering, management, etc. Meaning often management will shout something all the way across the room and expect a response, distracting the hell out of everyone in between.

Many, many more fictitious demos and presentations than actual products. I'd call the driving force of Blinkx software development 'lie-based engineering' - hack up some demo for a product that might take months or years to complete properly, show it off to someone with money, then in the rare chance they actually bite, deliver the goods piecemeal until said customer gets fed up and stops paying. If more engineering time could be spent on the core product than these demos, Blinkx might actually be a usable website or search engine.

Shouting matches in the office from senior management. Multiple firings began with a manager calling someone "(strong expletive) stupid" repeatedly in front of the entire bullpen and ended with the employee escorted out that same day.

Most of the engineering team is hired straight out of college so they can pay the least amount possible to people too naive to know that a real company should have organization and direction. Meaning there's no senior engineers to fall to for mentoring or advice.

Showy displays of lame bonuses or gifts to certain employees at meetings. Eschewing a holiday bonus because "most would prefer a holiday party". (I don't know who comprised this 'most').

Advice to Senior Management – If at all possible, learn what the concept of respect is and start showing it to your employees. Just because you're paying someone doesn't entitle you to swear at them in front of their colleagues, passive-agressively jab about job performance, and keep them in the dark.

But realistically, never manage a company ever again. You don't deserve to be in charge of anyone or anything and to pretend otherwise is doing our economy, planet, and sanity a disservice.

No, I would not recommend this company to a friend

Former Employee – worked at Blinkx

Pros – Compensation
Nice view
Web 2.0 space
Free lunches

Cons – No Effective decision making
Keeping employees always in pressure
There seems to be no effective planning coming out from executive management.
Unprofessional attitude towards employees coming out from Executive management.
Lot of work that comes with stress because of no planning.

Advice to Senior Management – Reorganization is necessary at executive management where more skilled managers and senior executive needs to be put in place. Also, value your employees.

No, I would not recommend this company to a friend

Former Employee – worked at Blinkx

Pros – decent pay and good colleagues (junior/middle management)
easy job (but boring)
shiny powerpoints (!!!)

Cons – senior management unable to steer the company with clear strategy, keep releasing different products diluting company's mission, none of which really work that well anyway.
Poor trade PR - no consumer PR
no industry knowledge
No HR whatsoever, people terminated without any reason, and immediately escorted from building so that they can't even collect their own stuff.

Advice to Senior Management – change of senior management seems necessary

No, I would not recommend this company to a friend

Current Employee – been working at Blinkx

Pros – There is no good reason to work for blinkx, you will be expected to work long hours for peanuts.

Cons – The company is propped up like a fancy magic act. Lots of smoke and mirrors. They promise software that can turn the audio in a video clip and make it searchable. The software they use for this, from their parent company Autonomy, does not work. These people employ more lawyers than actual engineers. Suranga is bi-polar, some days he's pleasant, most days he's a jerk that will use his Cambridge education to insult you. The CTO Matt is better suited to be a comedy writer than to lead any engineering team.

Advice to Senior Management – Find a bridge and jump off it.

No, I would not recommend this company to a friend

Former Employee – worked at Blinkx

Pros – I could have stared out the window for hours.

Cons – I couldn't wait to jump out that window.

It's amazing that you can find some of the most despicable people in the industry, lump them together, and put them at the helm of a software company. There is absolutely no upside working for blinkx. The CTO is inept and has no management skills. The CMO keeps the fake hype floating, the COO isn't afraid to show preference certain folks, and don't get me started on the CEO. Wow, he needs to go to therapy to fix his feelings of inadequacy.

Advice to Senior Management – Take some business and management courses at the local community college.

No, I would not recommend this company to a friend

Former Employee – worked at Blinkx

Pros – Hot space
Interesting technology
Good buzz in industry

Cons – Poor execution on products
Terrible treatment of employees
Poor communication- starting at management
Bogus PR: papering the industry with meaningless press releases
Lack of support, yet all the obligations on accomplishing things

Advice to Senior Management – It's time to clean house at the management level at blinkx, I don't think any reputable person who can contact people via sites like this or social networks will take a job at blinkx unless they are desperate.

No, I would not recommend this company to a friend

Current Employee – been working at Blinkx

Pros – Excellent remuneration
Opportunity to work at the cutting edge of technology
A great bunch of people
Good career development and a sense of progression

Cons – Bitter ex-employees posting whacked out reviews (see anywhere on this page)
The free Friday lunch (nice idea but could be better!)
Long hours

Advice to Senior Management – More transparency as to long term plans would be nice and better PR. The product we are building is awesome but it's a bit demoralizing when few people I meet even know what Blinkx is.

Yes, I would recommend this company to a friend