EchoStar Reviews in Denver, CO Area

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

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

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.

Pros

Free basic TV is about all I could say.

Cons

- As a supply chain individual, Buyers, Commodity Managers, and Materials Managers have NO Signing Authority. Even the Directors have limited signing authority. Charlie in his Micro Management mentality does not trust any of his employess to make the right decisions. He requires any purchase over $5K to be signed by a VP or above.
- There are no such things as snow days. Risk your life, and get your butt to work. Better be on time or HR will be dragging your butt up to your VP to explain why you are late; 9:00 am means 9:00 am. "Your papers please...."
- You are expected to put in a minimum of 45 hours per week. It is unwritten, but "encouraged".
- Health Benefits are the worse compared to other companies.
- Pay is below average
- Fear and intimidation are the working conditions.
- Turn over is extremely high in Supply Chain, even during a recssion. What clue does that give someone....
- Avoid working at Echostar. Might be a good stopping point as you seek employment elsewhere.

Advice to Senior Management

Since Charlie owns a majority of the stock, nothing will ever change. They talk about empowering the employees, yet do nothing about it.
It will never chage at Dish or Echostar, to so what's the point of making a recommendation.

Pros

Cool products and very nice people except for senior management

Cons

Worst benefits, Health insurance is practically non-existent

Advice to Senior Management

Give a damn about your employees

Pros

- good work/life balance, very few weeks in a year that you have to work more than 40hrs
- lot of freedom as a software developer, no micro management
- free TV!!!

Cons

- health benefits suck
- don't expect aggressive growth in career, performance based compensation doesn't happen
- bad company morale ... every employee is pretty much negative about Echostar

Advice to Senior Management

- better health benefits and pay
- take away the mandatory 40hrs, instead evaluate the software developers on how much work they get done and NOT how much time they spend in the office! It's your job as a manager to evaluate that!
- provide IT support to allow developers to work from home

Pros

Okay if / when the US economy is bad. You can work your ass off...or not; doesn't make any difference really.

Cons

Benefits are the worse. Salaries are way below average. Management is clueless.

Advice to Senior Management

Stop messing with good employees; stop hiring dumb engineers just because they are cheap.

Pros

It was a job. Enough said. There wasn't very many pluses to working there. Everyone is stressed, underpaid, and overworked.

Cons

The CEO uses the company as his own private bank to line his pockets while disregarding his most valuable asset: the employees. He sits in his lofty tower in Meridian with a view of the parking lot and watches everyone that leaves before the end of the work day. He'll then go down to the lobby and apprehend them. He does not believe in time off, demands long hours, and pays next to nothing for it. The buildings, desks, cubicles and decorations are all second-hand so it feels like you're working in a third-world country. The benefits package (healthcare in particular) is a joke and will require you and your family to go bankrupt in order to pay your medical expenses. There is no such thing as a snow day. If three feet of snow falls and the governor calls a state of emergency, he still insists on employees driving in to work rather than recognizing that an employee's health and safety comes before all else. Turn over there is high, and we're not just talking about the floor workers that service units or the installers that go out to jobs for installation. We're talking middle to higher management. Everyone is miserable there, and I'd encourage ANYONE that is either there now or who is looking at them as a potential employer to think twice about it. There ARE better jobs out there in the world. Stay away from Charlie Ergen because you will regret the time you spend at this blackhole of a company.

Advice to Senior Management

Take your head out of your rectum and start thinking about your employees. Have you ever thought about how many millions of dollars you waste each year training a replacement when your average turn-over is 3 to 6 months? Think about all the good you could do if you actually RETAINED quality employees rather than bashing them into submission. I'd also recommend ousting Charlie Ergen as CEO. As long as that ego-maniac is in charge, Echostar/Dish Network will NEVER be a top company to work for.