F5 Networks Reviews

Current Employee – been working at F5 Networks full-time for more than a year

Pros – Negotiable flexible work hours and friendly atmosphere which makes one feel welcome. Very multicultural and inclusive. Opportunities for career growth as company is expanding.

Cons – Hiring process is long so might need to wait it out. Entry positions sometimes do not renumerate at the same rate as competitors.

Yes, I would recommend this company to a friend – I'm optimistic about the outlook for this company

Current Employee – been working at F5 Networks full-time for more than a year

Pros – -nice technology and opportunity to learn a lot
-chance to see a company that is doing well finally
-many interesting people to meet
-if you can play politic you can definitely success there
-good benefits

Cons – -they don't focus on employees. they don't care if you stay with them or not
-overall communication with management is terrible. There are some 1st level mgmt that are fine but majority of them are only interested in their own carrier and bonuses
-commuting to chertsay is really bad
-there are really nice people who work there but because work balance is bad you don't have a chance to socialize
-stats driven environment; a lot of politic
-came to Glassdoor because I'm looking for a new job. seeing so many high positive review about the company I'm very suspicious that many of these can be fakes

Advice to Senior Management – -listen to your employees
-stats are not the only way to evaluate employee; when they speak listen to them instead of criticize
-it is nice to see that a company grows and have money but you are not sharing this with everyone

Yes, I would recommend this company to a friend – I'm not optimistic about the outlook for this company

Former Employee – worked at F5 Networks full-time for more than 3 years

Pros – - it was definitely a nice place 3-5 years ago
- if you are coming from outside you have a chance to negotiate something
- if you are a beginner you are going to learn a lot of nice networking stuff, but you will learn this as well as by any other company

Cons – - if you are experienced stay away from NSE and even ENE roles
- if you agree to work as ENE you work for 60h and more. As there are very few account managers and technical account managers you are going to deal with a lot of not technical issues
- the company has to changed internal hireing politic and they hire now a lot technically 'weak' NSE's. This means that ENE have a lot of job that were done before
- support is visible as a worst place in the whole company
- no matter how hard you work you are visible as a support tech and have no chance for anything else in the company
- they rather higher people from outside than work, educate and promote its own personel
- often an arrogance from lower to higher managers. You are there to do the work and any kind of complains that there is too few people and too much work is visible as a weakness.
- people who got some luck (read connections, etc..) have no respect to others
- you are seen in the company as an an employee and individual depending on the position you agreed to work on
- it is expected that once accepted the NSE position you are going to do the job for 3 years and not even a day less. Should you complain during this time you can forget of any kind of progress and carrier at the company
- in the EMEA there is noting than the Support and Professional services. If you see your self as an engineer with ambition to write code/scripts if needed forget about the NSE job.
- They are going to deal with a lot of manual and not automated work. A work that either the managers failed to do right from processes point of view or techicaly it is something that no one wants to do
- as the company roles out new products the NSE job became more and more about educating customers where to click on the GUI and what snat automap is etc.
- a lot of good people have never been recognized and the tendency is rather to look for other jobs than to go for the extra mile and work for the company. At the end of the day you know you are not going to be payed or promoted for this
- the internal tools are of low quialit (the still use a 7 years old php script to managed the lab)
- team work doesn't matter. What matters are your stats. You are as good as your stats are.

Advice to Senior Management – - move managers who have zero empathy away from managing your teams
- be smart and know who are the best performers in the team. Stats are not always the only way to find this out
- handle your people with respect, it is not only a tech fault that a customer get upset. This is a failure and lack of support structure in the EMEA region.
- stop pretending that everything is ok and everyone is happy. Ask for honest feedback in an anonymous way and build motivated, team driven collaboration between the people
- work recognition and bonuses

No, I would not recommend this company to a friend

Current Employee – been working at F5 Networks

Pros – A very positive, happy environment, mainly because the company is doing so well al over the world, but also because they seem to be hiring some good people.

Cons – The UK HQ is in a bit of a backwater, hard to get to and its poor style gives the wrong impression of a very good company.

Advice to Senior Management – Spend a bit more money on presentation and style. Considering they lead the market they could also do with some advertising to raise the profile.

Yes, I would recommend this company to a friend

Current Employee – been working at F5 Networks full-time for more than 3 years

Pros – Great Place to work, good payment

Cons – Customer shifting to cloud. Product in the market goes to commodity.

Yes, I would recommend this company to a friend

Current Employee – been working at F5 Networks full-time for more than a year

Pros – Great people and exciting product line

Cons – There can be long hours

Advice to Senior Management – Continue to keep a fun atmosphere to overcome negative aspects of long hours

Yes, I would recommend this company to a friend – I'm optimistic about the outlook for this company

Former Employee – worked at F5 Networks full-time for more than 7 years

Pros – Balanced life and work, not very lay-back, not much over time as well. There are some talented engineers as well.

Cons – A lot of office politics in some groups, a lot of complex relationships, brothers, buddy, previous company co-workers. Some managers are very good at politics and kiss ass, no knowledge or work ethics.

No, I would not recommend this company to a friend

Current Employee – been working at F5 Networks full-time for more than 7 years

Pros – Excellent focus on work/life balance, opportunities to travel and work with great people.

Cons – Growing pains right now impacting the organization can be frustrating and disruptive.

Advice to Senior Management – Make a decision and stick with it.

Yes, I would recommend this company to a friend

Current Employee – been working at F5 Networks full-time for more than 7 years

Pros – Small number of layers in the organization
Hard workers everywhere keeping everyone from feeling as though they are the only one rowing
Feels like family in many groups adding to enjoyment of being here

Cons – Need more vision related messaging coming from above to help relay to customers

Advice to Senior Management – Keep John McAdam. He has created trust with the employees and an approach-ability to the executive team.

Yes, I would recommend this company to a friend – I'm optimistic about the outlook for this company

Former Employee – worked at F5 Networks full-time for more than a year

Pros – - They pay higher than the market plus quarterly bonuses and shares (RSU) - so the money is great, thus it is the main reason to make you want to stay.
- Technology keeps running forwards (sometimes too fast, which leads to poor output), so it is always interesting.
- Most folks are above average on the technical side and OK on the personal side
- Facilities are running from OK to old and lacking of maintenance
- Nice gifts on holidays
- Some tolerance for eccentric employee behavior, like strange cloths (mostly in Seattle) and alcohol at the cubic (sometimes this is negative)

Cons – - The company tries to run as lean as possible, which means every person is squeezed to the bone - being pushed to work overtime, night, weekends and holidays, just to meet unrealistic deadlines while trying to accomplish tons of work, which should be shared by more than one person.
So, realistically, they pay to one person a 1.25 or 1.5 salary to do the work of two or almost two employees.
- Although that, there are islands where there are folks who do very little, on the same role and salary level, but managers do not divert them to help the overloaded employees. They are the lucky ones.
- Travel, even transatlantic, is always at the economic class, for almost all employee levels, except for the very top managers.
- Most of the 1st and 2nd line managers are terrible. Appointed and promoted mostly by seniority rather than by being suitable to be managers. Simply try to run by the lean atmosphere and push the employees to meet deadlines, without really helping them achieve it or questioning how realistic are the targets.
- Many veteran folks create just a few "close circle" groups that control the company and decide who's in and who's out, even if the employee is good - aiming to keep their regime.
- Shortage of resources and tools (hardware and software) to accomplish your work, which also makes it hard to meet deadlines.
- Low number of annual vacation days (to make you stay at work...)
- Upper management doesn't really care about how things are doing below them. Only come to do the "showoff" presentations to the crowd, but don't wish to hear what is really happening on the "factory floor" thus not meeting with non-managers.

Advice to Senior Management – F5 is known to be great for its salary, technology enthusiasm and open culture. This is all nice and good, but not enough. The company is both rapidly growing and moving from its safe ground of networking, into the security realm, which the company it is not really ready for nor know how to deal with.
The security world has many veteran giants who rule the land and know the game. It is not the networking world, and you will learn it with some harsh lessons. The current company culture and way of work is not ready for this challenge, of paranoid attitude, much research and very short response time.
The company is currently breathing its own past glory perfume, from the ADC world, not realistic about what is corrupting it from the inside of it and how to face the coming challenges that will come from the security uncharted land.

Some words to the CEO - Show yourself more on the factory floor (also meaning at all branches, not just Seattle). Take single employees to one-on-one talk (let them know they can ask for it but also randomly pick ones), do focus groups with several employees at once - encourage folks to talk freely with you, without being afraid to be punished for speaking their minds. Let your all-levels managers know that no part of the company is hidden from you - so they can't hide their wrong doings.

Drastically improve the way managers are selected, mostly when it is their first managerial role. Don't count only on their seniority. I realize it looks good to promote from the inside, but base it on skills and ability, not just by counting years of service.

Strengthen HR:
- Currently they only execute what the mangers tell them to, thus being the "human shield" for the managers. - Reconstruct the dismissal process - you lose good folks just because they did not were friendly to the correct people - make sure that someone is dismissed only if it is really the last resort and no other options in the company fit that person.
- If you dare - try to do a post mortem for dismissal events, see how things went wrong and what could have been done better. Talk with ex-employees, you may discover some surprising stuff, to say the least.
- Spot, with HR, not only by what managers recommend, the talented ones and create career paths for them, so they will have a reason to stay in the company.

- Watch very closely the remote branches, they always need much more care and attention than the HQ.

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