Pros
With a great location, an international staff, and a great growth strategy, it's difficult to criticize this company. It makes money. It encourages managers to help employees, and account managers to be customer focused. It creates support and development teams that integrate well with their customer bases. Management seems to take the long view, is internationally focused, and supports environmental issues and local culture. While salaries lag behind industry standards a bit, and team members may struggle with internal localization issues, there is NOT an expectation of unsustainable work hours or intensive political maneuvering within the company. This is not a bad place for women and parents to work, unlike most software industries, with one major caveat, noted below. With a few fairly small adjustments to the work hour policy, the salary approach, and internal communications, this would be a 5 star company.
Cons
First, Yardi has a great, open-minded approach to the world and the community, but can be a bit suspicious of new employees. Since many people stay with the company for a very long time, there is long period of proving yourself when you start. While this prevents the destructive "golden boy" syndrome that is rampant in software, it also gets in the way of a seasoned new employee's performance potential. Second, there is a word-of-mouth internal information network that has some pitfalls, especially for new employees. An internal knowledge management process and system with points of contact in each department would improve efficiency by miles. It appears that this is a fairly normal growth issue, but one that management should address, and one which would change the information culture Finally, the company has an extreme adherence to onsite work and a core hour policy that does not allow single parents to pick up their kids and work at home occasionally to make up for school schedule issues. Parents must live with no vacation time for the first five years, unless they work out other arrangements with their managers, which puts everyone in an awkward spot. The current family-friendly business mantra is flexibility, and while Yardi is flexible in many regards, it doesn't formally support family schedules and needs. Again, the insistence on a core-hours policy that does not fit the local school schedules (by 30 minutes!) and absolutely never working at home for employees on location, gives employees a sense that they are not trusted, and makes life more difficult for parents.... not that this company is unique in these issues, but it seems counter to the overall management/HR strategy.
