DISH Network Reviews

Pros

Good chance for promotion within the company. It's better than working at a gas station or fast food establishment. Recent incentives mean you can possibly make enough money to afford the gas to get to work.

Cons

The benefits are practically non-existent. Employees are treated like toilet paper. The turn over rate is the highest I have ever seen. It's really just a boiler room/sweatshop; using the bathroom can get you fired. I could go on, but why bother? No one WANTS to work there, no one dreams of working there when they grow up, but they are ALWAYS hiring and in this economy, that means people will have to resort to this nightmare of a place.

Advice to Senior Management

You pay $11 per hour to train new employees, and that is for 6 weeks. They get on the floor and have no clue what they are doing. Eventually, they learn, and many get really good! Then right about then you get rid of the very best of them for having kids who got sick or injured, spouses that are hospitalized, or something completely false, like say for instance, a drug test that they PASSED but HR screwed up... Ahem... Then you bring in a brand new herd of inexperienced people who will make $11/hr for 6 weeks then know nothing once they are on the floor, lather, rinse, repeat... It's so stupid, because those new people cost the company loyal customers with their mistakes, but won't actually be with the company any longer once they are an asset. You may as well just flush money down the toilet much like you do to your employees.

Pros

Good place to work to get "experience" for other jobs. The benefits are somewhat decent and there are plenty of different types of jobs available.

Cons

Poor leadership. Team building, motivation, and morale are last on the list for managers. Most employees are looking out for themselves and are not willing to help teammates.

Advice to Senior Management

Employees are threatened to have Dish service, even if you don't want it. They believe you are a bad employee if you work there and don't have Dish service. As leadership, you should work harder to understand why your own employee wouldn't want your service and then use that to make a better product rather than dismissing them entirely.

Pros

Working at DISH Network teaches you a lot in a short amount of time. You are able to work on a variety of different projects and gain exposure to many facets of the business. It is a large company, and is extremely faced paced.

Cons

There is little room for upward mobility unless someone above you vacates their position, and even then they often higher from outside the company. The salary is not equal to the work put into the job.

Pros

Most of the other agents are amazing.
Sometimes it can be a fun place to work.
The technology is second to none.
Could be the best satallite provider in the U.S. if they wanted to.

Cons

They really don't care about the customer.
All metrics but especially AHT (Average handle time)
Horrible insurance program
Sales dept is overseas
Too much misinformation
No job security

Advice to Senior Management

Get rid of the AHT. Give your agents the time to save our customers instead of just making 2 offers and cancelling accts (as we are repeatedly told to do by managers to save AHT)
Better advertising is a must. Our commercials are forgettable and do nothing to show how amazing our company really is.

Pros

Campus is nice, Cafeteria is nice in the summer time, friendly people, lots to do and learn if you can handle it.
3 weeks vacation after 2 years.

Cons

Regular employees treated as disposable, ready to be replaced with "Eager College Grads" and the remaining 50% of IT staff are consultants directly from India.
Management is always looking for someone to blame for the outages/problems, and make a mistake that makes a vp/director/mgr look bad and they walk you out the door.
Many managers are people who started off as installers and just kept changing jobs. They have been there soo long that they have no interest in pointing out major problems in how things are being run, lest they get blamed and walked out the door. Very much a fear based environment.
Every 12-16 months they go through and fire (no layoffs at Dish) 10-20% of their IT staff. Usually right before earnings come out or a new purchase by Charile Ergen is planned. Average lifespan of a technical employee is about 3 years.
Core Hours - you have to be at work between the hours of 8:30am and 4:00pm regardless of the weather etc. If you badge in after 8:30am or before 4:00pm be prepared to be grilled by the VP's admin on why you were late/left early. If you don't have a good (pre-approved) excuse you will get written up. They count the minutes you work per week, 45hrs (including no more than 60 min/day for lunch) is required, work less than that and get queried. They micromanage this like crazy.
No flex time, can't work from home but you are expected to be on-call from home.
Work all night on a problem you are still expected to be in by 8:30am or you have to take a vacation day etc.

Advice to Senior Management

Take a look at how much money you spend due to employee churn. Invest in your employees and get rid of all the micromanagement policies put in place for/by people who are long since gone. Treat your staff as professionals and chances are they will act like professionals. Get rid of the people who wont be honest with what's happening and are only concerned with covering their own butts.

Pros

Not micro managed
Make up your own schedule
Easy Work

Cons

Pay isnt great
Hard to get promoted without being friends with upper management
Pay for everything up front and takes forever to get reimbursed
lot of busy work
very disorganized.

Advice to Senior Management

Treat employees a little better and dont play favorites. Acknowlege when someone does something good. The produce isnt as good as you think it is.

Pros

Good overall work/life balance. Most of the line managers (through VP) are competent and good people to work for. Charlie Ergen rules the place with an iron fist and unfortunately nobody stands up to him, no matter what he wants. Not that I can blame them as it is clear he wants "yes men" rather than people who may challenge his thinking and will fire the latter.

Cons

Senior management sees all employees as commodities. It is a very inflexible place to work. Fingerprint readers that time your time in the office even for management positions. No flexibility as to when you arrive/leave. Benefits and PTO are terrible.

Pros

401K, clean place, free dish service, Ok health benefits. Bonuses if you meet expectation.

Cons

High turnover. Be prepared to put up with lots of verbal abuse from inbound calls. Your job gets threatened after you finish training( If you don't bring your score up you will be terminated) so don't get excited about your new job until you meet a satisfactory score on your calls. Bring your brain with you during training( lots of things to learn in 4 weeks )

Advice to Senior Management

Take it easy on new hires, You invest in them to be trained. Investigate why they quit soon. Make your operations smoother by providing all in one tool rather than having so many of them opened on two monitors. Get rid of all junk receivers and narrow them to something simple for your subscribers to understand. QA push for AHT , make it few more minutes longer, 80% of these calls ends unresolved because agents trying to save their jobs. Revamp your training program, make is simpler and not so condensed.

Pros

The people are great, the facility is great

Cons

Pay is below average, management is usually hired from outside the company, senior management has no idea what is really going on,

Advice to Senior Management

Talk to the lowest people on the totem pole and find out what they go through everyday. Really find out what is going on. Too much negativity and not enough positive reinforcement. Pay needs to be at least the average in the industry.

Pros

Denver is a great city. The ability to transfer to a different department if you believe it to be a better fit.

Cons

Unfortunately, pay is below average.
Vacation and benefits package could be better, as more companies are increasing vacation days.
Lack of transparency.

Advice to Senior Management

Management could show more appreciation to employees and offer better salaries for higher performers.
Increase and improve overall benefits packages.