SunGard Reviews

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

Pros – Great opportunities to shape your career, lack of micro management, truly international business with great travel options

Cons – Internal structures lacking, no management time to support staff, communication failures throughout the business

Former Employee – worked at SunGard full-time for more than 10 years

Pros – Great facilities and mostly very astute people. Good vision and energy to achieve. Truly market leading as a non manufacturer specific supplier. Multiple value streams and routes to market.
UK wide coverage and work placement options.

Cons – US employment legislation is very different to the EU. Unfortunately, the senior US management do not understand the implications.
Putting revenue before customer requirements is a dangerous practice.

Advice to Senior Management – Give more genuine autonomy to non US locations.

Yes, I would recommend this company to a friend

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

Pros – The right mixture between the great company, challenging role and the professional and supporting people. Great experience personally and professionally. Superb opportunity to learn and develop at a varied, complex and diverse organisation.

Cons – You need to be adaptable to change as the organisation is changing continuously.

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

Former Employee – worked at SunGard full-time for more than 10 years

Pros – options for working overseas exist

Cons – very limited opportunities for career progression

No, I would not recommend this company to a friend

Former Employee – worked at SunGard

Pros – Pay is good if you are loyal and professional
Good perks
Excellent offices in London
Very nice and friendly atmosphere in the office.

Cons – Outsourcing at its worst.It is astonishing how badly internal processes are broken due to the bad outsourcing attempts.
Once you reach the top in your product line you will be better off looking for your next position outside the company than hoping for an internal transfer.
Very fragmented structure with multiple business units , complicated communications.
Constant management/strategy changes with little visible effect that don't help the morale.

Advice to Senior Management – Make it less bureaucratic and ensure policies and rules are not counter productive.

Former Employee – worked at SunGard

Pros – The benefits are very good and there is an overall good feeling and support during performance of tasks. For the more junior roles, people get a lot of support and can spend the appropriate time learning the taks and responsibility.
Atmosphere wise, the atmosphere is fairly relaxed, it is quite easy to get help and advice from other people around you.

Cons – It is sometimes too segregated, there is very little cooperation between product lines and it is very difficult to move between product lines.
Once an employee achieves the most she can advance in the London office of the respective business unit, the almost natural progression is to use this professionalism in other business units. this is rarely done in Sungard, there is no benefit to applying for a role from within sundard than from without.

Advice to Senior Management – See above. Sungard is huge and should have better cooperation and support between business units.

Yes, I would recommend this company to a friend

Former Employee – worked at SunGard

Pros – Good environment with opportunity to meet nice people. A flat hierarchy structure giving all employees direct approach to managers and directors.

Cons – Difficult to grow to an appreciated level. Very large organisation and all employees are helpful. However, very competitive and demanding.

Advice to Senior Management – Interact more with all different levels of the people in the organisation. The more integrated the company the better operations will be.

Current Employee – been working at SunGard

Pros – Idiotic senior management makes you feel superior in every way.

Cons – Sungard Alternative Investments is run like a closed shop for the friends of the president of the unit (who are mysteriously all of the same religion). The managers seem to do very nicely out of SG but add little to no value the businesses they acquire - anyone else who is doing well out of it is open for the attack to add to the friend retirement fund. My company was a fantastic one to work for before Sg took it over. The president and COO screwed up the valuation by a factor of about 2 and since then they just keep chopping people to make the quarterly figures look better. How the president and COO are holding on to their jobs I do not know, but that is the kind of firm it is - everyone is to blame except the management. If there's a problem blame someone else and fire them. Sungard Alternative Investments is and awful unit of an awful company - if they acquire your company start looking for a new job because if they don't fire you, you are the unlucky one!

Advice to Senior Management – start respecting the people who made the companies you buy worth buying. Actually talk to the people in those companies and bring them on side, rather than treating them like idiots.

No, I would not recommend this company to a friend

Current Employee – been working at SunGard

Pros – SunGard AI has a relaxed work atmosphere for a financial services company. There is good, open communication from management about how the company's business is doing and what the strategic direction is. There is good support and benefits for employees and the corporate intranet is very good at providing information and resources for employees.

Cons – SunGard is not a monolithic company, but has grown from a series of acquisitions. Effort to integrat the various segments is slow to non-existant, even for related groups. Feels very segmented, so which particular division you work in makes a difference in your experience.

Advice to Senior Management – N/A

Yes, I would recommend this company to a friend

Current Employee – been working at SunGard

Pros – Nice people, good prospects if you work hard.Always possible to find someine within the company to help

Cons – Sometimes messy communications between different levels of management.Sungard aquires companies and communication problemscan get in the way of productivity

Advice to Senior Management – More flexibility and more communication between different parts of the company

Yes, I would recommend this company to a friend