Autonomy Reviews

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

Pros – most of crazy behavior is gone, the people who are left are actually very nice to work with. HP is putting in place new management who care more about people and communication

Cons – still a long way to go, some processes still not streamlined

Current Employee – been working at Autonomy full-time for more than 10 years

Pros – None. They bought our company and destroyed it. They didn't care about customers and cared less about employees.

The only "pro" is that HP have purchased us and everything is better. It was almost an immediate turn around in terms of message. Focus is back on customer satisfaction and it's very clear that employees are considered valuable again.

Everything

Cons – I was always proud of how much my company cared about our customers and employees and then Autonomy bought us. They clearly didn't care about our customers at all. Everything was about "new license revenue". So sorry if you were already a customer.

They treated employees like a commodity that could be replaced on a whim. It was truly a terrible few years until HP purchased us and saved us from the horrible policies and behaviour of Autonomy.

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

Pros – Great vacation allowance. Free lunch Fridays.
Maybe HP can fix some of the mess?

Cons – Everything else.
No review/raise process. Impossible to get promoted.
Unethical sales tactics like I've never seen anywhere else.
Support and services left holding the bag with a poor quality product that is next to impossible to implement and support.
Secret engineering team that nobody is allowed to actually talk to. You NEVER receive feedback on any bugs submitted unless you are working with the latest hot customer (the one with the most new business riding on the success of your project). Although I can't imagine they actually get any repeat customers. I think Lynch and Co. knew they were running out of suckers and that they had no good reference customers left and that's why they sold.
Everything is a fire drill - even planned implementations with a long sales cycle are staffed at the last minute. PS Consultants are shipped from one project to another in a big circle as each new customer becomes frustrated with the lack of knowledge and poor quality products.

Advice to Senior Management – Keep purging all of the Autonomy middle management and horrible anti-customer anti-support, anti-employee policies.

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 – You can pretty much do whatever you want because your managers are rarely around and there are no repercussions for not doing your work. It took one woman approximately 6 months of not ever showing up to the office to get fired.

Cons – There is no reward for trying. They lie to you about bonuses. Only the people at the top get promotions or bonuses. Nobody is very happy. Your boss will never be around. Communication is terrible. There is absolutely no training. You either figure it out or you don't.

Advice to Senior Management – Come to the office most days of the week (at least.). Learn the word "thank you". Don't lie to your employees about bonuses. Have a minutia of transparency.

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 – - Really smart & friendly co-workers
- Great line managers
- Great potential for growth
- HP Software believe in treating employees like human beings - such a contrast to the old Autonomy way
- Casual dress code
- Exciting products to work on
- Approachable senior management - any bottom-rung developer can go and chat to the CTO
- Free lunch
- Great opportunities to work with new technology

A year ago Autonomy was an awful place to work. It started changing on the day that Mike Lynch was fired. Let me have a little rant about him.... He had no idea how to run a technology company. He was a salesman, through and through - he even used to say "we're not a software company, we're a company that sells software". He had no idea how to manage people, either. He created a culture of fear, where whoever shouted the loudest (always senior management) got their way.

Shortly after he left, HP moved in. Since then they've forced Autonomy to do things properly. Product plans, roadmaps, not selling things that don't exist, only selling things that we can definitely deliver. Treating employees well. No arbitrary firings, shouting or forced overtime/weekend work. Heck, they're even about to introduce pay bands! Under the old regime pay was completely arbitrary and rarely increased. Under HP pay is linked to your job role, level and performance, with a review at the end of every year.

So, if I hated the old Autonomy so much, why did I stay for so long? I can think of three reasons:
1) The forced overtime cost me my social life. My only friends were my co-workers. That made leaving a really scary prospect.
- Forced overtime doesn't happen anymore, horray!
2) My skills hadn't improved. Autonomy never did anything properly, so I felt that I wouldn't be able to get a job elsewhere as I was becoming a cowboy coder.
- Under the new Autonomy, doing things properly has become a priority. My CV is a lot more robust now.
3) It was my first job out of uni. I wasn't alone in that, either - Lynch's hiring policy was "fresh grads only, don't hire anyone with relevant experience". How was I to know that real software companies were better than Autonomy?

Cons – - Some managers haven't adjusted to the HP way yet
- Previous management left the company in a horrible state
- We're doing things now that we should have done five years ago... if only Mike Lynch & co had had a vision beyond "sell software make money" :(

Advice to Senior Management – Don't try to short change us when you adjust salaries to match pay bands. It might cost a lot of money, but you'll buy a lot of loyalty by paying us what we're worth. A company is the sum of it's employees - you can't afford to lose the ones who are holding it all together.

Apart from that, keep driving us hard. We're really loving actually having a vision and strategy for once!

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

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

Pros – Competitive salary, benefits, high tech.

Cons – Poor company culture, poor management, lack opportunities, lack training, high attrition.

No, I would not recommend this company to a friend

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

Pros – This company was doing well on the business front

Cons – The culture is screwed up

Advice to Senior Management – Treat your people better

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 – Job security. Plenty of lateral job mobility for competent employees. Offices in many parts of the world.

Cons – Widespread incompetence. Predatory management. Dysfunctional business processes. Starved for resources, because nobody is willing to spend money to make money.

Advice to Senior Management – Mutual trust and repsect is better than fear and bullying. You will retain more quality employees that way, and gain their loyalty. Loyal, competent employees accomplish great things in less time and fewer resources, and you are judged by higher management by the accomplishments of your underlings.

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

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

Pros – You could promote quickly if you were good at "networking"

Cons – Pre HP acquisition: Lack of structured training, Dodgy sales commision scheme (paid late and alwayas trying to avoid it). Management of HQ absolutley tyrannical, unable to motivate employees other than with shouting and menacing

Advice to Senior Management – Retire

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

Pros – A lot of freedom with your work. No pressure whatsoever. Nice Christmas party.

Cons – Most of the codebase was pure spaghetti code and new grads are just thrown in there without any training or support. Most of the developers seem to be Cambridge geeks with no social skills. I can't think of a single time anyone in my team has greeted me with a 'Hello' in the morning. Very strange...

Advice to Senior Management – You need to change the company culture and support your new grads with training!

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