Red Hat reviews

I was in the sales/analysts part of the company, and Red Hat's sales organization has a less open-source culture than previous jobs where I worked close to developers. I worked medium-long hours, and especially long hours around quarter ends, which diluted my hourly wage to "not worth it". I used Windows/Excel/PowerPoint, and our team did things the way you do them at all US / multinational mega-corps. I felt there were too many layers of management between me and the customer, and that it would take forever to rise through at least 3 of the 6 layers of the corporation's management (just like a pyramid scheme) to get good compensation. The days of stock options ended sometime between 2012-2013 for the bottom-level developers/analysts. I think even first-level managers still can get stock options, but the chance for real wealth has past. Most of these cons apply to most corporate jobs. I improved my Excel skills to even higher levels. I didn't learn or improve other valuable skills that I can make money with, so personal growth was limited. I was praised for my effort and results, but never rewarded with more money, more time, or better work. I discovered my marginal earnings / hour were better managing my personal investments and fulfilling orders and improving the efficiency of my own little business during lunch, so I quit after 1 year. My managers said they were sad when I announced I wanted to leave, but didn't offer anything more to keep me. I think actions speak louder than words, and Red Hat's actions said it only valued me as a $28/hr (pre-tax) / $21/hr (post-tax) Excel and salesforce.com jockey. Red Hat offered no way of improving me into a higher-value role, so I left. I now make $35/hr on my lowest-value tasks, and can work as little or as much as I want, when I want, and still make enough to live where I like, and do anything I want all day, every day.

If you work remotely be prepared to get routinely passed over for everything, not in the office means you're effectively invisible. Much of the engineering work is just bug fixing, even principal developers seem to do little else. If you want the interesting development work, you have to do something to be noticed, and then be prepared to back stab your way through the queue of people for that coveted work. Then you'll invariably have to deal with the egos, and Red Hat has a lot of engineers with ego problems. Work-life balance can be frustrating. I often get to work past midnight. Not that you'll spend the entire time working, rather waiting for the baroque bureaucracy to complete. Personal growth: zero.