Avaya Reviews

Pros

Company is small enough to allow networking with senior management yet large enough to present opportunities for growth. Recent innovation and acquisition put Avaya in an increasingly positive competitive position in the marketplace

Cons

Acquisition of Nortel has resulted in significant turnover in leadership. Internal processes can be cumbersome and difficult to navigate. Private equity ownership and plans to go public have resulted in a lot of cost cutting

Advice to Senior Management

Recent stability in leadership is very welcome and communications to employees have been consistent. Improvement in our execution in bringing new products to market is sorely needed

Pros

Good technology, R&D, training, people

Cons

Struggled with acquisition and vision after that

Advice to Senior Management

Deliver what is promised on the vision

Pros

good work/life balance and permission from the managers to work remotely if necessary

Cons

few recognitions for work well done

Pros

Work from home options. Great base pay. Good time off and increases as you move up with your floating holidays.

Cons

Not so good benefits. Uncertain company future. no carry-over for vacation. not so good bonuses - no bonuses for years. no training for technical personnel.

Advice to Senior Management

Invest in your employees or they may leave. Figure a way to provide customized benefits for employees - as a manager I am worried I cannot keep good people.

Pros

Company has Flexible timing and work culture
Work Life balance
Good place to learn core telecom and cutting edge technologies

Cons

Less opportunities for growth
Bad Management and ambiguous growth plan
Less Salary Hike
India center having less focus on Core Telecom skills

Advice to Senior Management

Avaya has core competency in telecom but loosing focus on expansion/research on telecom area, Please learn from CISCO now they are concentrating back to core business(router/switch)
Please hire better Management, Management is very bad

Pros

People are always willing to help, which is different from some other places where people don't accept very well the work income.

Cons

Customers are tough to deal with. Since they know how Avaya works, they are always trying to make us do something different than what was sold.

Advice to Senior Management

Keep hiring good people who understands the real team spirit. It's always good to work with people like Avaya's employees.

Pros

The company offers a good balance between work and personal life.
Engineering management was supportive and facilitated employee contributions to the organization.

Cons

The company is very slow-paced. It can be a good place to finish your career, but it may not be the best place to start your career.

Advice to Senior Management

Company needs to be more aggressive. Avaya has been unable to establish itself as a credible networking competitor. It should expand to data center and cloud. An acquisition should be considered.

Pros

You are paid well and the benefits are decent. Avaya just started matching the contributions to the retirement plan; it's not a lot but better than some places.

Cons

Management doesn't know what they are doing. Luckily politics, chart-ware and promises keep director level and above employed. It would be nice if the senior management team actually looked at the numbers of what we are working on before they allow changes.

Advice to Senior Management

If an executive and his team hasn't performed for more than a two or three years, get rid of them and find some new blood. Maybe some people working for them can get the job done rather than just shuffling your friends around. If anything else, you can cut those higher salaries and spread the pay to some underpaid employees.

Pros

Great have the chance to work the AT&T/Lucent/Avaya product line
Great teamwork among coworkers
Good benefits

Cons

Lack of training on prodcuts damages the title of engineer, hurts customer expectations
Too many heads cut so remaining workers are overworked
Overworked associates are unable to provide timely service, face customer frustration head-on
Two ticketing systems at once with different operating rules
Two ticketing systems sending tickets simultaneously, including high-sev tickets
Engineers expected to support twenty or more products, seriously diluting expertise
Anti-union stance by the company wounding employee morale
Technical expertise removed from tier 2, also wounding employee morale
No incentive or motivation to remain with the company, losing brilliant help

Advice to Senior Management

Go back to how things were in 2000. Hire enough people. Show the customers and employees you care, because at this time it is obvious you don't.

Pros

If you are a geek and love unfinished and moreover untested products, this is the place for you.
If you are a real bullshit-artist and can build a career while foregoing a reputation of trustworthiness, then you are likely to get results at Avaya.
If you like reinventing the wheel every day you come to work, come over and move some paper @Avaya.

Cons

This is a company that doesn't even use its own products. Voice-messaging wasn't use by management to communicate sharp, immediate and confidential information to the company's employees in a timely fashion across the globe. Instead, they rely on regional VP's communicating to their "teams", but at their own wim and totally unsupervised.
Individual or team contribution to long-term revenue-streams is neither recognized nor compensated.
Avaya is a headless company, without a customer-strategy and no long-term industrial product vision. Ttoo many back-slapping chiefs at Avaya, who don't understand the value of the very skilled professionals who eventually will get hired away to Cisco and other great techonlogy companies.

Advice to Senior Management

Go back to the basics of running a business:
Without customers who trust you, where and how do you think you can build a sustainable business?
Stop robbing your clients and your employees.
Make your myriad of VPs and SVPs and EVPs accountable for creating LONG-TERM value to customers, to employees and to the business. Not just compensating them on revenue-growth --that only drives fast-buck activities and inevitably leads to cut-corner-behaviour.