Alcatel-Lucent Reviews in Chicago, IL Area

Pros

The people are the best you will find anywhere.

Cons

Working night shift 50% of the time.

Pros

flexibility
work and life balance.
training opportunities
excellent benefits

Cons

challenging industry with high customer concentration
several layers of management
too many process and organizational changes

Pros

Beautiful Buildings, cafe, campus and setting

Cons

Lack of support for advancement

Advice to Senior Management

Practice what you preach

Pros

company has good salary and flexible working time

Cons

company is keep outsourcing jobs to india - giving american jobs away

Advice to Senior Management

know more technical stuff

Pros

Flexibility to work from home.
Competitive benefits.
Smart people.
High tech.

Cons

80% of U.S. based workforce let go in the past decade. Huge "brain drain". Situation seems to have stabilized as problems surfaced with quality of work from "low cost regions". Those employees who are left aren't as concerned about losing their jobs as they were a couple of years ago.

Advice to Senior Management

A U.S. based customer doesn't want to talk to someone in India or China when they want to spend money or when they have a problem.

Pros

Good talented technical staff. Long history in R&D

Cons

Gloomy environment to work in, constant down sizing and low employee morale

Advice to Senior Management

No comment

Pros

Flex time, continuance of most of former Lucent employee empowerment practices.
Still the smartest people I work with are ALU employees -- (and we do have a lot of consutants due to rampant outsourcing) - makes you proud to be a part of this company.

Cons

If you are former-Lucent and based in US -- don't expect to moev into management anytime soon.
The company is headquartered in France and most european employess and managers still feel we are too US-centric and look at US provided solutions with scorn/disdain.

Advice to Senior Management

Don't forget US based employees.

Pros

Educational benefits were great. Very professional environment. Good IT resources. Reputable company. Great co-workers. Good and clean physical facilities. Improving at diversity.

Cons

Given the way things turned out for telecommunications and for the company itself, the possibilities for growth became non-existent. Some company politics were also questinable in therms of promoting the best talent.

Advice to Senior Management

Management can do a much better job defining priorities and the characteristics they really want on future managers/leaders. What was said and what was actually happening were not coherent.

Pros

They have very respectful vacation scheduling culture. If you schedule a vacation in advance you will almost always be allowed to take it.

Cons

The company has been managed badly and has not been doing well in the last 5-7 years. The culture within the company can be sometimes poisonous as management fight to survive and end up cannabalizing each other.

Advice to Senior Management

Its been too top heavy for a long time, so its time to get rid of the layers and those departments of 1 where 1 executive has only 1 person in it.

Pros

Flex time and work from home encouraged if not supported. Salaries are competitive for some jobs, below market for some. Benefits are good, but not UAW. Ben seems to have a clue (new CEO), but has to truly buck the system to create real change.

Cons

No raises for 4 years, layoffs are coming, no promotions, and too many layers of no to get to a yes. Merit review is a joke, doesn't matter what is stated, what is achieved, or overachieved, the ratings will fit in a predisposed, or sometimes post disposed method. None of which is based on what was written, performed, acknowledged or accomplished based on the Company's own words. Each year, benefit costs go up, and no raise is given with the excuse that the company is in trouble. Except raises are given in certain areas for certain managers and engineers. So trust is an issue. The AT&T-Alcatel mindset still permeates the management. No one is held accountable for business failures as management.

Advice to Senior Management

Provide reasons for employees to hustle, give intrapraneurs support, cut management layers back to 4, empower employees with decision making power.