Actiontec Reviews

Pros

It's a small company. You can learn a lot of things.

Cons

It's not an innovative place. Management is bad. Lack of communication.

Advice to Senior Management

Treat your engineers better. Trust them more. Stop spending money building talent for other companies.

Pros

There are some engineers that are good to work with.

Cons

Not an environment to learn and grow. Management is incompetent. Management does not have a clue what to do. No vision, no innovation. There is poor team work. There is no project management at all levels of the company. Expect a lot of micromanagement. Expect to get blamed for management’s bad decisions and mistakes. No clear directions on the projects. Expect to work long hours with very little time left for your personal life. Do not expect any recognition. Your accomplishments will be claimed by someone in management without giving you any credits. Reward is by politics not by performance.

The company hires freely, but fires just as freely. There are more fires than lay offs. Don't accept a job at Actiontec, you will be very sorry.

Advice to Senior Management

Try to be innovative. Improve the quality of the existing products.

Pros

A lot of the people that you get to work are really great. You just have to make sure that said people are in your line of work, and you also have to know how to learn fast without any help because ...

Cons

... Because it's not an environment for learning anything. If they put you on a new project, expect to know very little of how to accomplish it, and even less of what the end result should be. There's a lack of project management in nearly all aspects of the company, and very few people can say they know exactly what they are supposed to be doing.

Fully expect to give ideas and have them taken away from you with no actual credit given. Quite a bit of work will often be overlooked, no matter how good it is.

There's also a huge communication barrier between employees. Asking for help is pointless, and is just a waste of time as you won't get it. Even basic questions are often gone unanswered. Some will use terms and acronyms that nobody else has ever heard of, but they fully expect you to know them. Some just can't speak English that well, so you'll be struggling to figure out what they're saying more than working on what needs to be done. There are many levels of inner circles, some even existing within the same department which makes it highly difficult to finish projects in a timely manner, and making it even more difficult to figure out what's supposed to be going on.

In addition, there are plenty of times where unrealistic goals are set. Such that you could never achieve them in the time limit provided. And also expect the line in the contract "other duties as required," to be used with extreme prejudice. The chances of just doing "your job" are slim to none.

Advice to Senior Management

Figure out what you're doing with this company, and then hire the right people for the job. Quit being so cheap. You can't expect someone with years of experience to take a massive pay cut to come work for you. Try to be innovative, or at least hire someone with innovation, or your company will be swept under the rug by companies looking at the future. And concentrate and making sure your products actually fully work, are easy to use, and of good build quality before putting them out there because you're losing reputation by not doing it.