Akamai Technologies

Dominant position in the CDN market. Stable company.

Selfish management culture. I have not seen good managers of any level in many years in this company.

They all seem to be similar in style: their first priority is their job security and career ladder. The last thing on their mind is their employees and the company's long-term health and development.

This kind of management culture has even made engineers working in a similar selfish style. In the end, teamwork, enthusiasm, innovation, and collaboration across departments are getting less and less over the years. The company will suffer in the end.

Job pay level, including bonus and stock, is on the cheap side, i.e., low end of the Silicon Valley range. Besides, the company gears up more to hire H1 visa cheap labor to relieve its non-competitiveness in retaining good employees.

Some HR managers are not fair to employees either. They work from headquarters in Boston and know very little about Silicon Valley's open culture and employee concerns. When an employee reports issues about their managers to HR, they feel like HR is colluding with the manager to defeat the employee, rather than addressing employee concerns and solving problems of the bad manager and management culture.

All these cultural things make me think I will never recommend someone to work for a company headquartered in the East Coast.

Determined to improve management and its cultures for the long-term health and development.

Promote top engineer talents with no job security concerns from outside to be managers. Hire Silicon Valley HR managers.

All managers should have independent decision powers, not subject to someone on the East Coast. Treat employees right with competitive compensation.