Easy-going, DIY engineering culture - good alternative to lucrative pressure cookers AAPL, Google, etc. - Very Senior Software Engineer Akamai Employee Review

4.0
26 Mar 2019
Recommend
CEO approval
Business outlook

Pros

- Great work-life balance. - Lack of intense pressure, lay-off threats, etc. - Fair compensation, evaluation, if you take process seriously. - Company is always profitable and stable. - Company is very important to Internet's stability/performance.

Cons

- Lack of intense pressure also means lack of accountability and do-little employees and even products/teams. - A lot of meetings and talking; lack of smooth, repeatable processes in development. Tons of process but it's not efficient. - Hiring is inflexible and cheap (lets the Googles and Apples take potential hires away based on higher compensation; lack of flexibility in opening positions to suit referred talent; and other absurd budget-related failures). - Very cheap in terms of incidentals (equipment, parties). - Almost all tech built in-house since 1999 -- slow to benefit from open source community; almost no contribution to open source either. - Company always profitable but seems to be coasting in terms of breaking through w.r.t. market opportunities.

Explore other reviews about Akamai

5.0
10 Jun 2026
Recommend
CEO approval
Business outlook

Pros

Genuinely collaborative culture with talented, supportive colleagues across sales, marketing, and technical teams. * Strong work-life balance and flexibility compared to many companies in the cybersecurity industry. * Meaningful products and technology with a strong reputation in the market. * Employees are trusted to own their work without excessive micromanagement. * Good benefits and a people-first culture that generally prioritizes employee well-being.

Cons

As a large organization, decision-making can sometimes be slow and require alignment across multiple stakeholders. * Organizational changes and shifting priorities occasionally create uncertainty. * Cross-functional processes can be complex, which can impact speed of execution.

4.0
25 Jun 2026
Recommend
CEO approval
Business outlook

Pros

Good place to work and good benefits

Cons

Managers are pretty terrible, they don’t have clear goals

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