Juniper Networks

Great benefits:

• Unlimited PTO
• Flexible work-from-home available
• 90% medical coverage
• 100% 401(k) match
• Bonuses
• Stock options

Compensation for equivalent jobs at other companies is consistently lower.

Juniper seems to have no idea what it's supposed to be doing these days. It's surviving on its meat-and-potatoes route-switch business, but meanwhile, it has attempted several network management/automation/SDN solutions that have fallen flat on their faces.

I've seen quite a few good R&D engineers leave this company when their projects were sidelined due to Juniper following the latest shiny thing. We've bought a few companies to try to package their products, but to my knowledge, this approach has not been fruitful. The stock has been flat for the entire four-year period I have worked there.

Engineering lay-offs have become common in the last two years, leading some products to be largely unsupported. It's not clear to me that this company has its eye on the ball anymore.

We get treated so well that there's not a really great incentive to work hard and outcompete our competition. No one is hungry, and as a result, Juniper has retained a lot of pretty good, heads-down type folks and lost a lot of hard-working, innovative folks. Most of the colleagues I've met don't seem to know or care about the big picture.

Focus. Stop wasting time on gee-whiz features that no customer really wants. Focus on code quality, and customers will come.