EchoStar Reviews

Pros

Broad technical exposure to leading edge hardware, software, and systems technologies. Great place to learn about the media and broadcasting business and technology.

Cons

Little chance for advancement. No incentive bonuses for professional employees, just salary and company profit sharing (401k contribution).

Advice to Senior Management

Share your goals with the employees so they can help!

Pros

Good for not-graduated students and those who are just starting their career in software engineering. Good nice-looking office. Compensation is valid for students only.

Cons

There's absolutely no opportunity for growth for the software engineer. Most of the projects are either porting of some platform to the other hardware (writing abstraction layer), or bugfixing. Exceptionally strict working hours policy: one should come to the office not later than 9:30 and leave not earlier than 16:30. Only old technologies are used: mostly ANSI C. Noone there is really _senior_.

Pros

Cutting edge technology, some cool people to work with

Cons

Health benefits suck, management is incompetent, managers are appointed based on whether they play cards with directors or are abject bootlickers. Most of them have no technical experience and rely on that one person who is trying to get promoted and who agrees with them, even though it is usually wrong.

Advice to Senior Management

Dump management all the way down to the employees and start over. Get people who understand the technology and how to implement it correctly.

Pros

Nice and fun people to work with
Good work time freedom
Job security
Decent pay
Decent benefits
Good financially
Good market development
Innovation

Cons

Communication needs improvement----executive decision on production development changed when everything is ready to prototype after they agreed on the direction one month ago.

Inter-department cooperation could be improved----take long for people to understand each other.

Take changes very cautiously, a good thing and a bad thing at the same time.

Documentation on decision, direction and knowledge could use some improvement.

Advice to Senior Management

Make us the mind and hold on to the decision.
Better managers level training and put people with people skills for manager position.
Listen and open the heart, don't hang on to the own opinion over the study and research.

Pros

Good group of coworkers working here in spite of the management. Great place to get in as entry level just leave once you've learned your trade. There are really only two types of employees. The ones that have been with the company over a decade and are really cynical and those that have just started which are really naive.

Cons

It is just a mess due to poor direction and worse accountability. There is an open door policy, but it will get you fired or a bad review so stay away and just agree with everything. Blame based politics get you promoted, not your actual ability or production value. Don't think you will get rewarded on performance here, you will need to leave and go elsewhere.

Advice to Senior Management

Hire some consultants to tell you whats wrong (since anyone who does as an employee seems to get fired), and actually listen to them. Nothing internal is going to fix the company.

Pros

The company has come a long way since it's split from Dish regarding how they treat employees. The environment is pleasant and the working conditions are favorable. It is a great place to gain work experience and learn from peers.

Cons

EchoStar does not pay its employees very well compared to other employers. The benefits package is bare bones and more could be offered to employees with respect to flexible scheduling, time off and work life balance.

Advice to Senior Management

Pay attention to employee feedback. While pay and benefits offered may not be rich, the little things that could be offered to employees at no cost to EchoStar could make a huge difference in culture and employee engagement.

Pros

Many opportunities to succeed. Advancement is up to the individual. Company is working hard on recognition of employees. Management is coming around to the needs of life/work balance. You will not get rich working here, but you will have a steady job.

Cons

Of course, salaries are below average for most, if not all, positions. Benefits package is slightly below average, but improvements are occurring in some areas.

Advice to Senior Management

Ask for and listen to employees' feedback and take action. Openly communicate with employees about company direction/goals and issues that affect them.

Pros

It's better than unemployment (barely). If you are an absolutely terrible manager but a fantastic yes-man, then this may be the company for you to get some fancy titles for future resumes.

Cons

Pay is below industry average, even for the local area. Benefits are terrible. Overall treatment of employees is horrific.

Management is done by intimidation. Executives curse people out in "team" meetings and bang on tables. The management "open door policy" is a joke. The door is only open if you're there to agree with them. If you have a dissenting opinion, but don't have concrete proof that you're correct, you'll get chewed out for wasting their time. Management has referred to entire departments of employees as "monkeys", completely invalidating their value to the company.

Nobody cares how hard you work or how competent and productive you are. If you aren't there by 9am and if you leave before 4pm, you may get written up. If you are a useless lump of flesh, but you're at your desk 10 hours a day, you're a model employee. Badge reports are run regularly to make sure you're putting in your hours. DISH Network employees (and some shared services Echostar employees) have to pass through fingerprint scans to get into and out of various buildings.

Working at home is not allowed, period. It doesn't matter if your entire job can be done from your laptop with access to the internet and functioning phone, you have to be at your desk, rain, shine, or blizzard.

Management communication is non-existent. Don't bother wanting to know about anything outside your immediate team's knowledge, as it isn't going to happen.

There is no business plan. There is no sales and operations plan. There are no annual goals. There are no department goals. The company is in business in spite of itself, not because it does anything well. Management overall is clueless and spends their time playing politics and getting promoted. Echostar has more vice presidents than a dozen normal companies combined. Titles are everything.

Support systems are neglected and are in many cases decades behind. If you're not working on something new and shiny in Engineering, expect your project to be absolutely last on the priority and funding list. The good-ol'-boys club of executives are all gadget fanatics, but nobody cares whether or not they can sell the product they're designing. Product marketing doesn't exist. Program management doesn't exist.

The company is structured in a multitude of silos that act almost like independent dictatorships. Executives fight for their kingdoms to look good to their bosses, but nobody cares if their efficiency gains impact somebody else negatively. Since there is no unification at any level, time and money is wasted because everyone is running in different directions.

All problems are solved based upon triage and firefighting techniques. There is no planning ahead, and everyone simply struggles to stay afloat by fighting whichever fire has the current management focus.

Charlie Ergen (Chairman of the Board for Echostar) once sent out his 5 golden rules:
1. Know your business
2. Do it right the first time
3. Think long term
4. Spend money like it's your own
5. Take responsibility

These "golden rules" are broken so consistently by management that the entire thing is a gigantic joke for the employees. Charlie Ergen once mentioned in an all team meeting that in order to help cut costs, everyone should be willing to pick up and reuse paperclips that are on the floor. Meanwhile, Charlie's forecasting methodology (pure guesswork) results in unused product sitting in inventory collecting dust.

Conflicts of interest are common and widespread. Since Echostar and DISH Network split into two companies, we still have several departments that are "shared services". So for example, DISH Network's accounting team does the accounting work for their direct supplier Echostar. Echostar's supply chain department does the material planning for their customer DISH Network. Yet nobody recognizes the inherent conflicts involved in such a relationship. The nepotistic relationship between DISH Network and Echostar means that pretty much anything goes, even though none of these allowances would be acceptable if it was say Echostar doing planning for Comcast or DISH Network doing accounting for Motorola.

Echostar does not commonly lay people off. However, entire departments have been let go suddenly with no explanation other than "they were fired".

Customer service is horrendous. Even for employees, trying to get your equipment replaced/fixed can be a huge pain. Billing mistakes are common and incredibly difficult to resolve.

Advice to Senior Management

Find a way to get rid of Charlie Ergen. Fire every executive who has worked for Echostar/DISH Network for longer than 10 years. They've done things this way for so long, they'll never allow for change.

Create a business plan for the next 10 years. Create a sales and operations plan upon this. Communicate these plans to each and every employee. Align every department in the company with these strategic/tactical plans. Communicate. Communicate. Communicate some more. Create goals, use the SMART method of goal setting.

Have some accountability within management.

Stop treating your employees as barely necessary evils and "monkeys".

Separate Echostar entirely from DISH Network.

Pros

This is an excellent company to start at and be trained and work on the bleeding edge of technology

Cons

Get a high initial salary, once you start you are unable to get raises that reflect your growth or any new skill sets. they have sent me to some off-site training, but my income is at least $15k below industry standard. I have been told leave the company and come back so I can be payed what I am valued at.

Advice to Senior Management

don't cap raises so harshly, pay people what they are worth and keep the good employees with the company, high turnover is the result of salary and horrible benefits

Pros

40 Hours per week not much more
Stress levels are low
Understand needs for employees family being first
Stable job, very low chance of losing job
Expectations for work output matches pay and benefits

Cons

Low pay
Medical benefits worthless
Tuition reimbursement is ridiculously low (just enough so they can say they have it)
Top down direction rarely reaches workers
Decisions and information comes slowly and is not communicated well.

Advice to Senior Management

The company needs positive leadership styles, removal of profanity and intimidation tactics from top level management and some sound direction, clear communication, and clear future outlook that is stable and well communicated and understood by the entire team at all levels.