Alcatel-Lucent Reviews in Chicago, IL Area

Pros

Satisfying work. Exciting new technologies. Flex time and work from home available.

Cons

Constant layoffs. No future for US based software engineers.

Advice to Senior Management

Keep the R&D in the USA.

Pros

It's a job and it pays well. If you already live within driving distance, go for it. Else, you can find better employers. The facilities are good and the people are experienced.

Cons

Continual downsizing and outsourcing. Shrinking the in-house talent - particularly in the US. Ever since we merged with (were bought by) Alcatel, the new work has been shifting to France. It looks like management is going to shrink the US talent pool to a maintenance level and move all the interesting work to Europe. If you want to be creative, plan to work in France or find another employer.

Advice to Senior Management

If you don't tend to your US talent base in product development you are going to lose it. You can outsource jobs for a while, but eventually, you will be left with no experienced talent to even guide the outsourced workers....the outsourced workers are not what you want planning your products.

Pros

Excellent benefits and if you are fortunate to align with an effective VP or Executive your career advancement is much better (not to mention a better chance for career longevity).

Cons

With the constant inability to stabilize profitable revenue growth, the company has to continue to downsize (even in areas where growth is significant). There are still two different cultures; the old Lucent culture and the Alcatel culture. Lucent was more customer focused, especially with the larger telecom carriers where Alcatel seems to operate in a manner commensurate with the pre-divistiture days meaning, they will get the products and services to the customer when we can and not necessarily when they (customers) need them.

Advice to Senior Management

Need to have a major overhaul at the VP and Executive levels and bring in new faces with new ideas (basically change agents) that are both customer driven and innovative. I would think that should stimuate more revenue growth and conclude the downsizing of competent employees who have years of knowledge and know how to effectively provide solutions to the end customer's issues and technical concerns. Eventually, most of the North American Alcatel-Lucent employees will be laid off thus causing a void with our US based customers in equipment and services support.

Pros

The workers at Alcatel-Lucent, at least the former Lucent employees since I worked almost exclusively with these folks, were among some of the smartest and most conscientous I ever worked with. The people who tried really cared and carried the company.

Cons

Alcatel brought with it a lot of the classic characteristics of bad French management. ("Why make it simple when we can make it complex?") Lucent has all the characteristics of a former 100-year old monolpoly. Its management is full of managers who never had to be efficient or organized (since it was based on a "cost plus" revenue system while Ma Bell ran the US phone system). In fact, the more people it hired and the more it spent on useless ideas, the more money it made! It has horrible compensation systems for its management and salesforce (paying for sales, not for profits).

The company is very badly organized and while some departments are working 60+ hour weeks, others are fairly useless and make it hard for the productive groups to get real, very needed work done.

They promote rah-rah cheerleaders into management who have no clue how to manage except to support the people who suck up to them.

There is no well-integrated strategy for the company, and this leads to scattershot efforts at doing anything to have a good quarter, even if it means robbing next quarter's sales and profits.

Advice to Senior Management

Find someone who really knows what a successful strategy is and then execute it throughout the organization. Focus on the customers that pay their way, not on the hundreds of small telecom firms that are not profitable and eat up the ever-shrinking resources.

Pros

Flexibility. People. Used to be innovation. This company used to be filled with some of the brightest minds in the country. The people are generally determined to put for the best product and take no short cuts. Our people are honest, and hardworking. We tell our customers the truth, even at times when it could be to our detriment. When we make promises to deliver, we deliver.

Cons

morale low, management misguided, future

Advice to Senior Management

We have to take more risks, and lead the pack again. We need to focus beyond the big customers, and not allow them to guide the direction of our company.