HARMAN reviews

The was a time where this company was looked upon as the leader in the space. Today that has become more of a talking point than a reality as it continues to stuggle to deliver cutting edge consumer products, enter into ultra low cost commercial products, and finding ways to capitalize on auto companies outside of the normal big players. Many of those that built this company are now gone and leadership is focused on markets other than the US. At a time when they could become a top tier supplier at home and regain the respect of consumer and clients, they have ignored the opportunity in the US. With a CEO that ranks as some of the highest paid (a complete 180 from the past) he has failed to leverage stock price back to solid levels, continues to play the role of rockstar CEO while misleading the media sloth, and continues to slash costs leaving departments so thin that the errors of their efforts become magnified in light of what was once a great company.

In recent years, corporate management in Stanford has become large and bloated, made up of mostly people from outside the audio industry who understand little about audio technology and the audio business. To make the non-corporate underlings more accountable they've put into place hierarchical layers of bureaucracy in all processes. As a result, decisions take forever to be made, often without valuable input from the people who know best. The slow decision process and compensation scheme means product managers are often unwilling to take risk: not exactly an environment to nurture innovation and new technology. Compensation is based on meeting unflexible targets set 1 year in advance (not long-term goals), so managers make decisions to maximize their bonuses, not always what's best for the medium-long-term health of the company and the consumer. A good example is arbitrarily moving factories/engineering to Mexico/China without adequate preparation. In the short-term, it saves money on paper, but at what cost? Time will tell whether the leaders realize what Harman's core competency is (good sounding products) and get behind it, before they destroy it.