BMC Software

Better brush up on your Knifey Spoony skills.

 

Good luck and enjoy the new job.

I worked there for a year and a half. Was part of a big layoff in January 2009. It was a weird time for the company... getting beat up from below by the "as a Service" vendors, especially ServiceNow. I was working in one of their more interesting businesses... service automation, and the company had just acquired BladeLogic and put a lot of their former execs in charge of key areas (eg Dev and Vick... two losers). Those folks made the environment a bit difficult and they left shortly after the layoffs.

Systems management is a mature industry, and traditional vendors like BMC and CA have struggled to find their footing the past few years. BMC went private (to avoid the challenges of quarterly financial reporting) and then there was even rumors they were in talks to acquire CA (weird idea... two struggling companies). Now it appears they are looking to go public again.

While the above may sound like I am dissing the company... I am not. There are a lot of really good people there and the Houston campus is actually nice (despite being alongside Beltway 8 south of I-10). The mainframe business is consistently led (Bill Miller has been there a million years). The service automation business is now led by Gur Steif and he is super smart (was in the mainframe business). Jason Andrews is a good sales leader. They lost a lot of their smartest Marimba people (eg Kia Behnia... one of the nicest geniuses you could work with) and a number of good people over the past few years (Tom Bishop, former CTO; William Hurley... strategy guy, used to skateboard into work) and Bob Beauchamp (former CEO) but there are still some really smart and good people there.

I also knew some of the people in Australia and they seemed smart and happy, so that speaks well for you. Most important is the people you work directly with. Again, good luck there... I think its a good company and you should have fun. Happy to answer any other questions.

 

At one time was consistently ranked as best places to work in the world and #1 in Houston. It has lost that luster and now just an struggling IT company like the rest of them.

 

The office isn't near downtown. it's about 30 minutes away.

 

I worked there 3 years (2000-2003) and had a very uneven experience. BMC tends to grow via acquisition, followed by mediocre product management.

I did enjoy working with the people in my group. I worked in a strong product, until it had a bad quarter and was shown the exit. That was all many years ago.

 

Shame we didn't overlap. I helped on a few acquisitions (ProactiveNet, RealOps, Emprisa Networks, and BladeLogic) but those all happened well after you. Sounds like you were there when Remedy was acquired but just before Marimba.

 

Haven't worked for BMC but I know plenty that have worked there in the past. Really depends on the division and product(s) that you work on. But that's true for most companies in the services and hosting space.

The point about product management is a reality with BMC. They've bought so many products over the years but have not maintained product management with deep knowledge of those products. This tends to result in very superficial product management that can go awry really quickly (especially if you're hiring lots of younger and cheaper developers at the same time).

BMC seems to do the same classic mistakes that a lot of other software companies do. They buy products, slowly cut costs by shedding longer term staff that came with those products and replacing them with younger and cheaper replacements. That certainly lowers costs but it comes at the expense of terrible development practices that slowly corrode the quality of the product as bad decisions tend to only show up in the longer term.

But honestly, that's just super common in the industry and isn't unique to BMC. There are lots of companies that are gobbling up various services products and all of them seem to behave this way so its not really a negative per say as everyone seems to do this. The cost of migration from some of these services is so high that you can basically run them into the ground and your clients more or less can't do anything about it since they're too reliant on them.

 

Remedy, yes.

I remember that after the Remedy acquisition BMC had a serious charm offensive to convince Remedy users that they would not f*ck Remedy up.

Good times.

 

My current company is finally dumping Remedy for ServiceNow which is part of a much larger Accenture contract (who is also dumping Remedy). BMC really screwed that one up. Its arguably a better product but its just so dated and poorly maintained.

 

BMC is not good at software development. Sad but true. It does sound like BMC milked Remedy for 15 year plus, so in their mind they think that they made money on the acquisition.

 

Their whole business model doesn't require good development. They just acquire products, cut development costs which inevitably ruins the quality of the product in the long run while fattening margins in the short term.

None of that requires good development. As long as you're maintaining contracts, you can torch the actual quality of the product. This is common to similar companies as well. (although BMC is probably more brazen than some others)

Its amazing how well this model works because it really does. Their major problem was a failure to anticipate cloud solutions since other companies were able to produce better products AND lower costs because of cloud hosting while BMC was still stuck with the overhead associated with on site or data center hosting. But I think they've finally figured that part out so they can go back to their normal process of buying products and stripping them.

 

Hopefully not scaring the OP... these are challenges at almost all software companies and honestly, there are many other companies where the challenges are worst. For example, HP (not Compaq side) was horrible. HORRIBLE. They went with a "string of pearls" strategy of SW acquisition and even bought one vendor to replace a previous acquisition. In the systems management space, BMC software would laugh at HP since they would show up at the same customer with sales teams from two of three different groups (companies, eg ex-Peregrine, ex-Mercury, ex-... even when they had their own OpenView) ). HP lots of money on acquisitions (eg Autonomy blew $11B alone). And thats just mistakes they made in systems SW.

BMC will be a good place to work... don't worry.

 

Very true... part of the reasons they scrambled to pick up cloud and automation companies... the companies like ServiceNow were getting price sensitive customers that also saw the advantage of scalability of "as a Service". HP was also in that same scramble... acquired Opsware at the same time BMC acquired BladeLogic (BladeLogic and Opsware were direct competitors). CA had the same if not bigger challenge... they renamed their company to CA Technologies to show they were getting away from on-premise software.

Now all technology companies are moving towards "as a service"... including hardware and traditional services.

If I was starting out... I'd focus on "predictive analytics" or sensors. Heck, even and especially sports analytics. Work with Mooory. I know someone that was the lead designer for the Titlist Pro V1 ball and is now a consultant in sports analytics. She is rolling in the dough.

 

Beltway 8
A road to behold

 

BMC is about to get bought by a venture capital group

https://www.houstonchronicle.com/bu...be-acquired-by-global-investment-12952037.php

 

KKR has some really interesting companies in its portfolio and they generally have a decent reputation. Time will tell but this is more likely good than bad. The current ownership group was largely out to make a quick buck and had no interest in keeping the country long term so good to see the sale go through.

 

I worked for a company located in CityWest and distinctly remembering the BMC guys being the least fit, least happy, and least interesting people around the place.

Yeah, that was my two cents.

 

PE is not usually good. They are trying maximize cash flow which means fire a lot of people.

 

well if he just got hired in the Australia office he's ok

the only people who are going to get the axe are the people who've been there long and make lots of money