Barracuda Networks reviews

Upper management, and particularly the CEO, is a mess. At a recent all-hands meeting (October 2016), the CEO made several highly inappropriate remarks about the election and trivializing allegations of sexual assault against Donald Trump. I, along with several other employees, wrote to tell him that we were bothered by his comments, and received a sincere but perfunctory response which has not been followed up on. How this could have happened in the first place boggles the mind. After Barracuda went public, management announced extensive cost-saving that would not include pay cuts. Soon after, when the usual time for reviews and raises came around (February 2016), it was announced that these would be delayed slightly because management wanted to rework the review system and because 5 out of 6 senior HR had either quit or were on leave. Nearly a year later and nothing more has happened on raises. We have yet to hear whether there will even be raises next year, whether they will be retroactive, etc. This all happened right after the cost-saving announcement, but that's probably a coincidence. The main project I work on is important to the business, but is not a product that users pay for. As a result we get almost no resources and are drowning in technical debt. Nothing changes as long as it keeps working, barely. I know of other groups in a similar position. Barracuda is very lacking in diversity and has a real brogrammer culture. Around a dozen women work in the Ann Arbor office, out of a total staff of 200ish. PTO is combined vacation and sick time, which sucks, and is only 12 days per year. Benefits are OK, but the 401k match is low and is vested at 25% per year. That last 25% is the main reason I am still working here.

high turnover means aggregate knowledge is dropping as more and more higher level techs are leaving for jobs that offer better pay and less stress. Also means you have a lot of new employees saddling more experienced techs with questions, while those techs are already trying to deal with difficult escalations. pay does not feel adequate for the amount and intensity of work and expectation, support techs are ridden hard and payed "ok". Talented techs with good personalities are driven to other jobs, and the company is constantly bleeding off it's top end talent. There are a few difficult personalities in higher positions that strain workplace relationships across the board, it's easier to go around than work with them. training for most products has not been formally organized and is pretty haphazard, new hires will be placed on calls fairly quickly and may struggle for help if their T2's are overloaded, which they frequently are. Tier 2 and above techs will have a lot of non-support responsibilities pushed onto them in addition to their original support expectations I have known 4 different people, all knowledgeable and talented folks, have to go through this ridiculous process to get a promotion: 1) apply for promotion/new position while still working at Barracuda 2) get denied 3) quit, work somewhere else for 3-6 months 4) re-apply for exact same position 5) get it Seeing that happen with more than 1 person tells me there is something weird going on with the management that makes those decisions, and it's a lot of undeserved and unnecessary stress to put a valuable employee through.