AT&T Wireless Reviews in Redmond, WA

Pros

1. Politics is minimal compared to other companies
2. Management is very helpful in making you successful

Cons

1. Poor benefits
2. Lower than normal salaries

Advice to Senior Management

Offer better salaries

Pros

interesting work - opportunity to work on some innovative projects and new technology
good work environment - friendly people, understanding management styles, real work-life balance

Cons

promotions are slow slow slow, benefits are very modest (high deductible health plan)

Advice to Senior Management

more presence & communication needed, more recognition, better promotional opportunities.

Pros

great pay and great atmosphere even in office. all guys are flexible to work with.

Cons

No food cafe inside the building and even no place to chill around inside to have lunch or some.

Advice to Senior Management

Just try to set up inside food cafe.

Pros

The people are professional, meetings are timely, there is a lot of independence, compensation was good, you can work from home.

Cons

Process heavy, requires a dozen people to make a decision, low accountability between groups meaning difficulty in completing tasks you are responsible for that are dependent on other groups.

Advice to Senior Management

Institute a culture of accountability so that cross deparmental tasks can be accomplished without acrimony and individual team members can do their jobs.

Pros

stablility and job security if you get one in wireless data

Cons

cheap cheap company...very low pay

Advice to Senior Management

pay a little more.....if you make your employees happy, company does better.....think innovation....and respect work not politics

Pros

There are no good reasons. The place is a hell hole.

Cons

You have a bunch of ancient redneck good old boys from the dying wired industry trying to run a wireless company. Wireless is the only thing that brings in any money and they're doing their damndest to destroy it with all their brilliant, up to date, management techniques. Total culture of fear and intimidation. And why they voluntarily let the union into the merged Cingular (prior to name change to AT&T), I will never understand.

Advice to Senior Management

Respect the intelligence of employees, truly empower them, we're not idiots but if you treat us like we are, that's what you'll get in return.

Pros

The few upsides to working there include: they have an official telecommuting policy, the company seems relatively secure, the employee rate plan for cell service is cheap (for now), and outsiders instantly recognize the name.

Cons

Red tape, bureacracy, and more red tape... what else would you expect from a 300,000-person telecom giant that's a century old? Being that large and not having finished integrating the legacy organizations of SBC, BellSouth, and Cingular, the left hand does not know what the right hand is doing. The company is full of lifers--people who are there just to retire or get a severance package. They've cut costs to the point of hurting morale, as in no free coffee, no plates or utensils in the kitchens, less A/C in the summer, and less heating in the winter.

Advice to Senior Management

Address attrition by improving salaries and/or benefits (keep in mind that for those of us in IT-related jobs, your competition includes Microsoft and the heavyweights of Silicon Valley), train managers in management and leadership principles so that they can competently perform their jobs, and don't pinch pennies to detriment of morale.

Pros

free cell service and pension

Cons

Horrible medical benefits (AKA disaster insurance), archaic business model and work culture (really, no plastic cutlery or cups, plates, coffee?). CEO makes $22 mil/year and abuses company funds (private jet, home security system, club memberships).

Advice to Senior Management

share the wealth, get with the 21st century. ATT Wireless (McCaw Cellular One at one time) was a truely innovative, technology driven, forward thinking, rewarding company to work for. See the likes of amazon, Microsoft in the day, Google, companies that now know that employees that are taken care of will truely take care of the company in return. The company now reminds of of the United States under the George W Bush administration. Bass ackwards...old boys network...archaic...

Pros

If you like technology and challenges, you will like the environment in Redmond. The offices were ok, a bit crowded at times and not enough conference rooms. The benefits were good, and when a relative of mine was very sick, my manager and director were very flexible and helpful.

Cons

Beauracratic, good old boy politics from the Atlanta office. The mandates they would send were so 1974 and were an insult. The truth is that the AT&T Wireless employees were smarter than 90% of the Cingular employees, that was clear from day one of the acquisition. They would have two or three people doing the same job that one AT&T Wireless person was doing - talk about bloated payrolls!

Advice to Senior Management

Continue open communication with employees, don't let the old farts in ATL tell you how to run a company that YOU made successful.

Pros

The wireless industry is an exciting, rapidly evolving one. Competition and steady growth bring new challenges and opportunities for continued growth and development. Being part of a company with the scale and history of what is now AT&T brings some advantages in terms of overall corporate stability, employee resources, support for diversity, etc. Much of the work here particularly in the Marketing and Technology units is meaningful and rewarding (though certainly not all) in terms of being able to drive significant revenue, create cutting edge products and services and touch tens of millions of customers. The Mobility unit specifically is the lifeblood of AT&T at the moment -- the growth engine providing fuel for investment in new wireline, broadband and entertainment services while the company continues to manage the decline in traditional wireline access.

Cons

Unfortunately, many of us who have been "here" (in the Redmond/Seattle area specificall) for a fairly long time (10+ years) are nostalgic for the good ol' days of AT&T Wireless when the leadership was local, the company was growing like wildfire and the culture was one that focused much more on employee satisfaction than it is today. Particularly now that the new AT&T (post mergers/acquisitions between CIngular/AT&T Wireless, SBC, Bell South and legacy AT&T) is a company with over 300K employees, the level of bureaucracy has skyrocketed. While many departments still try desparately to move at rapid speed, corporate processes slow things down. Expense management frequently seems to trump all other objectives. Benefits -- once highly competitive -- have sunk to mearly middle of the road. Employee morale and corporate culture varies considerably depending on department and location. A Marketing Mgr in Atlanta could have a very different experience from a Customer Operations Specialist in Bothell or a Technology Architect in Redmond. All would likely agree though that while the company is on balance a good place to work, it's no where near as fun as it used to be.

Advice to Senior Management

There are some signs that investment in other more nascent areas of the business could be happening at the expense of wireless investment. That is a mistake.

Also, let's have a little more fun and take ourselves a little less seriously.