Alcatel-Lucent Reviews

Pros

Balance between work & home

Cons

Partial
Difference between Alcatel employee & Lucent employee
poor growth plan

Advice to Senior Management

Hire some impartial Senior Management people who can stay for long.

Pros

In many parts there are challenging technologies to work in and there are many good and talented people at the lower levels who have not drank the Kool-Aid yet.

Cons

Too top heavy in management; unfair compensation practices. Unfair compensation to the employees who have been there the longest. A new hire in off the street will make more than a proven person with many years of service and management just says tough.

Advice to Senior Management

A little more concern towards the employees. The upper management has bought into the greed is good mentality and do not care about the employees, only "shareholders" matter. They will outsource in a second for a few extra bucks. Management needs to get rid of the be grateful you have a job mentality.

Pros

Good data product set. New technologies are coming to the market every day. The edge router family is the best in the industry.

Cons

Upper management doesn't respect the average employee. Products that are establish can take 10 weeks to ship. Some products aren't priced to compete in the market.

Advice to Senior Management

fix product time intervals

Pros

Easygoing, collaborative environment with great respect for work-life balance. People are very helpful and friendly at ALU.

Cons

No real leadership. Company size hinders effective leadership and management. It takes too long to get strategic messages to the tactical teams and those messages are often distorted. As a result, there are very few wins for the company.
The company has the best of intentions when it comes to treating its employees well, but this sometimes becomes a detriment to their success. I saw many middle and upper management who were extremely ineffective continue to screw up over and over. No accountability resulted in settling for low performance, which brings the whole company down.

Advice to Senior Management

Cut out the middle and start taking risks by making difficult needed changes to get results for shareholders and employees.

Pros

Good benefits, good amount of vacation time.

Cons

Stodgy culture from the Lucent side of the merger makes this a poor place to work. Very much a sense of entitlement from Paris, HQ. Very political.

Advice to Senior Management

Get serious about running a business.

Pros

There is very few places to go in Spain

Cons

Low salary, no promotions for technical people, always thinking on when will be fired, etc.

Advice to Senior Management

It's waisting time to do that since they never listen to anyone from below.

Pros

You work with the best.

Cons

The more you perform, the more you are assigned work, the less you will be rewarded.
Unfair work condition

Advice to Senior Management

Fairness on work load and rewarding the talents

Pros

Comfortable
good work culture
friendly teammates

Cons

Not much career growth
management is not great
more of product maintenance job

Advice to Senior Management

Better management with better strategies and better planning

Pros

Good benefits, good balance between family life and work. Bonus is satisfactory. Their 401K is one of the better ones.

Cons

Lack of vision. Still unfinished debate after the Lucent Alcatel merger; two camps exist and there is no synergy in between.

Advice to Senior Management

The management should consider creating a synergy between Alcatel and Lucent camps and move forward for the success of the merged company.

Pros

Not much work, once you understand their technology and streamline things.
Work life balance is good.
You can play ping pong if you like.

Cons

-Not much visibility into the future the company is heading from top Mgmt.
-Must be very good at office politics.

Advice to Senior Management

Always remember that people are your most important asset. Just don't say this as a catch phrase, but show it in your actions.