AT&T Reviews in Raleigh-Durham, NC Area

Pros

Respective to employees
Friendly and Intelligent coworkers
Fexible hours; Great work-life balance
Interesting work to do

Cons

Need to do very detailed timesheet that report every hour you work
70% of position is contractor

Advice to Senior Management

Communicate more to contractors and treat them as part of team as well

Pros

AT&T has good yearly salary increases, bonus plans, and preferred employee discounts
Room for growth in different organizations of the company

Cons

(Review based on work with Network Operations)
-Environment in my location is horrible
-Dirty, disgusting building (only bathrooms and break room floors get cleaned)
-Don't even have office supplies
-Outdated equipment and furniture
-Operations Managers micromanaging the Level 1 and 2 technicians
-Health insurance is not great
-Not many opportunities for promotions within THIS organization. You have to look elsewhere in the company
-Everything is focused on making the customer happy, employees are treated like second class citizens

Advice to Senior Management

Management needs to show more appreciation for its employees. The senior management thinks that just by speaking to the employees periodically, that we feel appreciated. Think about sponsoring employee events and creating a happier environment in the workplace. Employees dont want to feel as if they are working in a sweat shop.

Pros

-large company..lots of resources
-lots of benefits and discounts
-exposure to latest technology

Cons

-good ole boys club
-slow growth and promotional opportunites

Advice to Senior Management

find ways to move people around internally. find ways to create jobs in the US (stop outsourcing everything!)

have more events for the average employees to show you care.

Pros

If you like overtime it is not unusual to have about 60 hours or more per week, reasonable easy work, company provides vehicle tools and training

Cons

6 days a week every week, every saturday, never know when you are finished, poor pay and generally treated like the red headed stepchild of the company. Not currently represented by a union and are subsequently abused by the company

Advice to Senior Management

Stop abusing the fact that southeast technicians are not represented by the union and recognize the value they provide n what is certainly becoming the flagship of the future for AT&T

Pros

AT&T is a good place to work for flexibility in your schedule (i. e. working from home, adjusting hours as necessary). Additionally you have lots of avenues for providing feedback to management and other resources to improve your work experience.

Cons

Promotions seem to only be possible when new positions above your opened which doesn't necessarily happen often. If you have to work with another group within AT&T it can be very frustrating, some groups are built to be able to defer responsibility it seems.

Advice to Senior Management

Address intra-AT&T interaction issues. Also work to provide additional avenues to promote individuals.

Pros

A decent opportunity for a single recent college grad who needs sales experience.
If you can sell print yellowpages during a recession in the age of Google you can sell anything.

Cons

Most sales people DO NOT make it past their one year probationary period. If you do,congratulations you should continue in a sales career.

The company seems to be moving toward centralized fulfillment of everything resulting in sales people spending much time in administrative tasks, paperwork, service and fullfillment, difficult to find time for selling. Centralized fulfillment is also resulting in lost jobs or employees being required to relocate to keep job.

Customer Service is extremely lacking, often rude, and they fail to actually help, or resolve anything, and that's if you can stand being on hold for forty-five minutes to even get through to customer service. So your advertising customers get frustrated and then cancel their business with you when its time for anual contract renewal. Poor customer service department also results in the sales reps having to do more service and problem resulution to keep business resulting in less time available to go out and sell.

at&t advertising has for years many fulfillment issues with various products that again result in lost business that counts negatively against the rep assigned responsibility to the account.
Accounts are routinely reassigned to different reps each year, only a small percentage, mostly large or major accounts get the same rep several years in a row. These issues also result in advertiser frustration and dissatisfaction.

at&t has created a selling environment where at certain times most, 90% or more,accounts are open season for any and all reps to call on. This results in more aggravation and frustration with customers getting calls from different telemarketing sales reps who often pose as quality managers or customer service reps or they say that they work with the previous rep that actually met with the customer so the customer thinks that person is benefiting when really the cyber or telemarketing rep is just tryin to make a fast buck without caring about whats actually best for that advertising customer.

at&t has a damaged reputation with many businesses who no longer advertise with them, and there seems to be a lot of negativity that spreads as business owners talk to each other, making appointment setting very challenging.

The company has an extremeley complicated software selling system that is extremely labor intensive and time consuming.

at&t is also trying to downgrade the health insurance and increase the amount employees must pay, while also trying to negotiate with the CWA Union a contract that actually appears to pay out much much less in commissions with only a very tiny increase in base salary. The Union also revealed to members that other geographic divisions in the company are getting a much better commission plan, so there's not equality across the company.

Advice to Senior Management

Focus on people and on quality. Focus on people by maintaining and/or increasing compensation not trying to decrease it. Focus on quality by fixing everything thats broke including the company's reputation.

Pros

You get great benefits and overall the job is not too stressful. I enjoy being an RSC because I not think the job is too stressful and I enjoy being at work. In my store pretty much all the reps get along and help each other out, so this job has not only been a great way to make money but it has also been a great way to make friends. Customers usually are pretty good to work with so it is really rewarding when they are satisfied with their service and products. This job has given me many skills that I plan to use for the rest of my life.

Cons

I hate having to work on weekends and that is what you have to do in order to make money because that is when all the customers come. I also hate when customers are rude or difficult to work with. Sometimes they treat you so poorly like you are not even worthy to speak with them. They also lie all the time to try to get us to bend our policy. I also don’t like having to stand up for eight hours. I feet and legs hurt when I get home.

Advice to Senior Management

To try to know everyone on a personal level

Pros

If you are looking to understand how a US based and US managed company runs, then ATT may be a good place. This will allow you to grow the knowledge of how business may be run, no matter if you agree or disagree with the business model, but its what you get out of it. Growth is somewhat limited, as you need to seek out and create your own growth. If you are not in the right location, then forget about moving up. You may end up doing the same job for many years to come, but there may be some pay increases, not a lot, and bonus.

Cons

No promotions, unless you are in the right locations. The politics of what side of the fence you came from, " Legacy S" Legacy T, etc. Always having to find out what is really meant from management through your peers, as there is always an FMP in the horizon. If upper management is worry about their role, you will not be releasable to other jobs.

Advice to Senior Management

Stop acting that all employees are clueless and get off the union mentality. Let the employees know in a very clear and concise manner what is going on and stop the PC bandwagon.

Pros

Having worked at AT&T for any length of time looks good on a resume, but even that is starting to lose value.

Cons

There is absolutely ZERO loyalty to the employees that have built this company. AT&T as a whole is a profit monger and cares nothing about corporate responsibity or integrity. It bases decisions on how well it adds dollars to senior management bonuses and disregards its duty to increase shareholder value. Management is unresponsive. Policies are idiotic and counter-productive. Benefits are non-existent. Job satisfaction is a distant memory. Professional development is stagnant. Training amounts to rediculous HR-related topics and nothing of a substantial technical nature. Employee reviews are subjective and aren't based on any real measure of productivity or value to the business. Contractors are treated poorly. Jobs are cut needlessly and remaining employees are then over-burdened and unreasonably expected to be responsible for the failings of a management team that can't understand that if noone is left to paddle, the boat doesn't move.

Advice to Senior Management

Listen to your employees. They are the experts that understand the job and the technology. Start showing confidence in their abilities and stop alienating them. Information should flow freely and managers should stop treating their employees as threats to their own jobs. Promote from within and start treating employees with respect and value. You can't run a business with a knowledgebase alone. Its the people that make AT&T. Stop using the word empowerment. Empowering people without giving them authority to act is worthless. Manage for success and stop leading your people to failure by not allowing them to do their jobs or putting up roadblocks that ensure failure. Get your mind past the myth that you have a budget issue. There is no budget issue. There is only an issue with how much capital you are diverting to upper management pay. Invest in training and give your people enough time to take some of it. Some workcenters are so poorly managed and understaffed that they can no longer function if anyone takes time out to do any training. The same is said for sick time or vacation. Improve the wage scale and benefits to keep people from leaving. Provide incentive for people to WANT to stay. Stop trying to convince everyone there are no problems and start trying to fix things. You're leading this company into the ground and you should wake up before your employees do.