Intrado Reviews

Pros

Intrado is a great IT/technology/telephony company that focuses on employee growth. Intrado focuses on internal promotions and giving employees the tools to do their job effectively, which has an end-result of satisfied customers. The company strives to have a good work-life balance and definitely understands that a job is a job, not your entire life. While some depts have designated on-call rotations, it never seems too burdensome.

Cons

Some depts have easier career paths than others.

Pros

Concerned about well being of employees
Good work out facility & showers

Cons

Poor environment for software development, physically and organizationally
Some management does not encourage employee participation or listen to ideas
Communications between organizations is not always good.
Inconsistent policies across organizations.

Advice to Senior Management

Build an environment where employees are encouraged to participate rather than one where they are discouraged or appeared to be ignored.

Pros

Business is about saving lives, contributing to community.

Cons

Poor management. Fails in compensating fairly.

Pros

Kudos are given out monthly. Rewards include bucks for a night on the town. Company wide recognitions are very creative and worth going after. Good access to lots of different technologies.

Cons

Things were wonderful until a recent shake up of managers where they were all taken from groups where they were experienced and put ahead of people with which they had little or no experience. The reasoning by Sr. management was to make lower level managers more broad in their scope. But the affect set projects and personnel back a year.
Also, upper management seems to have a "teacher's pet" attitude with lower level managers and will not listen to the folks in the trenches when they are saying so and so has a real management problem, etc. Some lower level managers need to be let go or pulled back, but it's not happening.
The company is trying to go public and so pay raises have been frozen for 3 years and counting.

Advice to Senior Management

Put experience managers back in place where they should be and fire incompetant and fully selfish managers who are bringing their staff down.

Pros

Intrado really does do important work.
They really do have good facilities for their employees (gym, bistro etc)
Stable place to work even in a bad economy.

Cons

Work life ballance is really non-existant, in a technical role it is not uncommon to work 50-60 hour work weeks with no compensation or time off.

Intrado has not given raises for a couple of years now while they continue to send sales and executive folks on expensing vacations and outings.

Intrado preaches that 911 and the work they do is critical but it is rare that they actually release a stable product or buy the equipment necessary to support the uptimes they claim.

Upper managment is not only untechnical but they are afraid to make a decision which frequently results in longer and more frequent outages.

Intrado doesn't pay up to par with the rest of the industry and as a result frequently gets sub-par employees that leave after a short period of time or stay because they don't have to put forth much effort.

Advice to Senior Management

Executive managment really needs to take a deep look at their middle managment and ask themsevles... What does _____ do to help Intrado.

Pros

Meaningful work, fun technology, on site cafeteria and gym, telecommuting possible, talented group in general. Several top level executives are impressive.

Cons

Frequent recent layoffs. Somewhat secretive management plans.

Advice to Senior Management

Put knowledgeable people in charge.

Pros

The food court was nice. Also, a lot of the coworkers that you find there are extremely nice and fantastic people.

Cons

Management is terrible. They constantly tell you one thing in personal "one-on-ones" and then when it comes to review time, they say totally different things. Instead of being encouraging about a promotion, they promote the people who management personally like, instead of focusing on ability to do the job at hand. Just because you aren't best friends with your supervisor or manager doesn't mean you should be looked over for promotions or advancement in the company. The raises here are also terrible - 1% or less!

Advice to Senior Management

Get some supervisors and middle management who are truthful with the accomplishments of employees. Just because a supervisor or manager doesn't like you doesn't mean you should be looked over for promotions.

Pros

Interesting work subjects. Interesting technical challenges. Very nice cafeteria. Many of the individual contribitors and front line managers are nice people.

Cons

Very poor strategic planning and communication from upper management. Everything is "top" priority. Company does not understand project management, resouce management, or portfolio management.

Advice to Senior Management

Improve communications.

Pros

Intrado is leading the way in the 911 market. It is truly work worth doing.

Cons

When a person leaves our department it takes months to get them replaced which results in an insane amount of overtime that will be mandated if you do not willingly sign up for it.

Advice to Senior Management

Pay your employees to be on call. Understand that when someone leaves replacing them as soon as possible and limiting overtime will help all of the employees enjoy their job more.

Pros

Very nice building. Very safe place to work and at times can be very fun. It is possible to get a good work life balance if you get in and work hard.

Cons

You are judged by presence, not performance. You are rewarded and promoted if you are there long hours, even if spend that time messing around. If your there working hard and get your work done but don't put in a lot of 'butt time' you are viewed as a slacker. Promotions are more of a popularity contest.

Advice to Senior Management

Leadership and management seem to be more concerned with what is best for them, not what is best for the overall health of the company.