Kyocera Wireless Reviews

Pros

A very Competent, Friendly, and Enthusiastic environment.
Learned a lot about latest technologies and business ideologies.
A great company for a great exposure.

Cons

The company in India got bought over by Mind Tree. So the working principles now may have changed.. No Idea !!

Advice to Senior Management

The interest in the random spectrum of products is very high and challenging.
So the speed levels have to be at power with the other leading firms.

Pros

San Diego
In the UTC area

Cons

Low compensation
No growth or advancement

Advice to Senior Management

Management has no vision or strategy. The company can't successfully communicate internally and has been down spiraling for years. The writing is on the wall.

Pros

freedom to explore design. great work life balance. ethnic diversity. small office, will take on more responsibilities.

Cons

Japan design team has vice grip on final designs that are produced. Japan design group do not understand US culture and lifestyle so many of the designs that come out into the US are not appropriate for the market. San Diego office is not empowered to make any decisions on products for US market. Japan feels they know better , because of this.. mobile phone group will eventually dismantle after one product boff up after another. Echo and Zio prime examples.

Advice to Senior Management

Empower your people in San Diego office to make the right decisions for the US market. They know their market better than Japanese planning counterparts. Japan needs to trust global offices and let them drive. Right now, there is no trust.. look at the flops of echo and zio as prime example of japan introducing the wrong products into the us market. Despite San Diego teams warnings.. they did not listen.

Pros

Good work-life balance
Central San Diego location (UTC)
Flexible hours
Chance to learn telecommunications industry
For the most part good and hard-working people

Cons

Penny wise and dollar foolish
Constantly operating in a reactive mode and being at the mercy of carriers
No product-related decision is allowed to be made locally and everything goes to Japan for approval
Forget about upward mobility unless you are Japanese
Two weeks of vacation in telecom industry (WTF!!!)
Leadership positions assigned based on the number of decades a person has been with the company and not whether one has talent for it.
Ringi is something one will never forget.

Advice to Senior Management

Ten years of non-profitable business -- it maybe time to think about abandoning telecommunications and focus on other businesses.

Pros

can gain end-to-end experience ; global experience

Cons

no management recognition; no long term strategy

Advice to Senior Management

need to set long term strategy and also see who is actually contributing

Pros

good work from japan and USA

Cons

bad management, needs to improve their proficiency

Advice to Senior Management

do something about your skills

Pros

Life-work balance is good
Flexible hours
Central location in San Diego
Good people to work with

Cons

All of mid-to-senior level management are Japanese
There is no professional growth unless you are Japanese
Morale is very low
Communication between Kyocera Japan and San Diego is non-existent.
Most senior management doesn't speak English

Advice to Senior Management

If you are serious about US Market hire and promote Americans
Make English mandatory in meetings and inter-office communications.

Pros

good company with enough opportunities. I would recommend other to join as they can learn a lot in telecommunication domain

Cons

Some delay in execution. and technology laggard, They should be fast in launching the technology and service in the market.

Advice to Senior Management

he is leading nice. I don't have any advice to give him.Just focus also on emerging markets where revenue can come

Pros

Currently, the only positives are people and the benefits, not the job
Great severance packages that come out every year
The job is located in San Diego

Cons

Poor leadership, lack of direction, no technical challenges as Japan now does the engineering (poorly), be prepared to be bored
Constant direction changes (which shows how clueless upper management is)

Advice to Senior Management

Turn out the lights. You have successfully ruined a good company that had potential and made it a joke. This company could have had been the first to market with a color lcd, mega pixel camera, android, etc but you thought it was better to stay in the low tier and stick dollar bills on every phone sold. Now you want to be a top 3 handset manufacturer with smart phones. Please roll out another Blue Sky plan ..... LOL
Than you buy another losing venture (Sanyo Wireless) and are repeating the mistakes of your past.
Kyocera Wireless would make a great cased study in how not to run a big business.

Pros

At one time, a few years back, there was great promise for this company. It was one of the first companies to have introduced a smart phone, long before the prominence of the iPhones and Android phones. There were allot of good people to work with and the place was full of excitement (some times a bit too much, but you don't get both ways). I found it very rewarding to get my part of the work done to get new phones shipped. We would be doing three or four new phones each year. For an engineer it was a great environement to learn and broaden my skills. In the area I worked on, a typical engineer gets to work on much wider technical areas, keeping things interesting. Over all, it was great place to work.

Cons

IMHO, the sernior management made a series of mistakes, and the company lost what could have made it competitive in todays markets. Instead, it ended up concentrating on the second tier carrier markets and seeing its revenue shrinking and products cornered in the low tier phones. Along that, engineering jobs were transferred to India and Japan. Now a days, there are barely any engineering jobs left in this companys San Diego operation.

Advice to Senior Management

This would be to the senior management in Japan: get to know the US market better before making decisions on how to run the US operation.