ALSTOM Reviews

Pros

Great place to work with alot of roof for advancement if you show interest in developing yourself. Would recommend to anyone looking for an engineering job in Richmond.

Cons

As with any job in this industry, there are very busy spring and fall outage seasons. This sometimes makes getting time off difficult, but it is not impossible and it comes with the territory.

Advice to Senior Management

I would improve upon the communication of organizational announcements, and also possible changes in line management. This would be my only advice.

Pros

# Highly Paid jobs
# Good benefits
# Flexible working hours
# Lower level teams for very friendly
# Free parking

Cons

# Power communication between the team
# No work from home option
# Micro Management
# Compact Office space
# no

Advice to Senior Management

# Improve the communication and try to be professional.
# Stop yelling at employees
# Improve the timesheet
# Give employees chance to express their opinions

Pros

More holidays and paid leaves than other multi national companies
Relaxed and not cut throat office culture
Training and traveling opportunities

Cons

Everyone has an opinion and slow to reach a decision
Do not recognize achievement
Not fairly compensated
Not a lot of opportunities

Advice to Senior Management

be more transparent with employees and less potical
award employee's achievement
creat more opportunities among different businesses
be more open to set objectives

Pros

Alstom has a diverse product line with multiple locations. Somebody with the skills and competencies to move to other countries could be very interested in working for this company. Training is highly supported via the corporate academy in place and the workplace is professional.

Cons

Constantly managing by crisis. Organisation changes happen weekly with little or no feedback. Still a French bureaucracy with a grands ecoles mentality and former colleagues brought in to teams because management is unimaginative and risk averse. Diversity is just lip service and talent management is a joke.

Advice to Senior Management

Time to change the CEO and have a new start. The people are fantastic in Alstom, but you should let them do what they do best.

Pros

Alstom provides electricity for many people, and gives some chance to the employee to do their best performance. In Alstom your educational background is not your future work, you can to be what you want, meet with your passion.

Cons

Working in project oriented, so when there are just a little project to do you can spend many times jobless, but when there are so many project you could be breathless.. :)

Advice to Senior Management

Give more appreciation to the employee, and it's better to do some recreational activity with all management and employee to make us better when working.

Pros

Good atmosfere
Flexible hours and vacation
Many different fields
International destinations with presence in many countries and important cities
Work in important projects

Cons

Strongly incompetent management
Good technicians don't grow or promote
A lot of engineers working as politicians, and this is the management
The company doesn't take care about you at all
If you are not french you are not important

Advice to Senior Management

Gentlemen, please start to take care about the technical job positions, specially the positions that are not in Paris, the other sites exist also...

Pros

A company that is gloably present and gives the opportunity to travel if you wish to. Good colleague, and atmosphere. A good team spirit overall.

Cons

Lots of politics, which causes power to spread unequally: this prevents good decisions from being taken. Centralised power in Paris, where all decisions seems to be taken, with no or little understanding of what is really happening on sites. Too much useless reporting, which causes inefficiency.

Advice to Senior Management

Give more local power but also and especially resources in order to match expectations.

Pros

Exposure to many different type of industrial projects.
Plenty of travelling around the world.
Great community of colleagues from many different countries.

Cons

Too many transversal links diluting responsibilities.
Lack of true leadership with long term vision on this site.
A recent lack of Quality in some of the products manufactured.

Advice to Senior Management

Ensure that Unit Managing Directors are true leaders in order to obtain full supports from their teams. This is not the case on this particular site.

Pros

Balance between work and life

Cons

less salary and personal identification.

Advice to Senior Management

Nothing

Pros

Overall, Alstom has been growing over the last 7 years, through both internal and external growth. This creates opportunities for good performers, and people ready to relocate internationally. This is an extremely international company: main HQ is in Paris, but Power HQ in Switzerland. Overall, many divisions enjoy an almost complete autonomy, and more and more power is transferred to the regions.

Cons

HR Community and support is not at the level of what you would find in GE or Siemens. Due to the growth of the last years, the company has lost a bit of its "project culture" and is sometimes too administrative, and too process oriented. Senior management has launched a new program ("ease") to reverse the trend.

Advice to Senior Management

Come back to a "project-based" company and cut through administrative positions at Power HQ.