Level 3 Communications Reviews

Pros

If you have been long enough, you get enough time off.

Cons

Management has no clue what is going on.

Pros

Some Excellent people who are dedicated to the success of the company. Excellent work ethic by many in the support group.

Cons

Heavily in Debt. Turnover and lack of direction. Poor understanding of competitive market.

Pros

Comp is strong
People are talented
Leader in the space of the services it offers

Cons

- Senior management does not understand what to do
- Company is handcuffed by a Chairman who has a "pawn" Board of Directors and a CEO who should retire
- Re-orgs and senior management changes happen so often there is no time to ever get traction.

Advice to Senior Management

- Get a new CEO with innovative ideas and stick with a strategy for more than 9 months
- Focus on more than selling commodity circuits

Pros

Competitive compensation
Good benefits
They have a good network for CDN and SIP and of course the legacy IP network.

Cons

Extremely process driven which kills any individual initiative.
Lots of turnover including the top ranks - 3 different Division Presidents in 2 years
No company culture or sense of community
Long provisioning intervals and slow maintenance response times.
Tendency to look at people as expendable which causes a lot of talent and knowledge to walk out the door for greener pastures

Advice to Senior Management

Develop your people and allow them to take on more challenging opportunities even if they don't want to work in Broomfield or PA. Stabilize upper management, create a vision and stick to it.

Pros

Enjoyable: great boss, good people, beautiful surroundings, and good work/life balance

Cons

Not overly stimulating, same thing day in day out

Advice to Senior Management

Keep up the good work

Pros

Beautiful campus, great view of the mountains, lots of windows, decent benefits, talented people at lower levels of the corporation.

Cons

The top management does not know how to run a corporation. The top management has been saying the same thing to stockholders over and over again since the 1990's. The top management seems to be running in circles with little or no accomplishments.

Advice to Senior Management

Find someone talented who knows how to run a corporation. This corporation is in desperate need of life, inspiration, color. This corporation died a long time ago.

Pros

Pay, people and benefits are what keep most people at Level 3
People are very smart and keep things interesting

Cons

Work/life balance does not exist if you want to continue to be an employee
Lack of overall direction, management team (high and low levels) do not work collaboratively so there is a ton of duplication in effort - no one wants to share what they are doing
Corporate culture is fear based, people are afraid to push the envelope for fear of reprisal but those that do pull of a successful deviation are rewarded (although seldom enough to make the risk worth it).
It's who you know and how much you are liked that will get you promoted or moved into a more desireable position.
Constant fire drills and abundance of work put into"critical" initiatives that are suddenly abandoned or transitioned to a new team/department without any explanation.
Processes and understanding of how everyone's jobs tie together are non-existant
Constant reorganization prevents real progress from taking place, very few people even get business cards printed because by the time you get them your title, department, and manager will most likely have changed
Lone-wolfing, back stabbing, and oneupmanship is the rewarded and recognized as "taking initiative"

Advice to Senior Management

Senior leadership seems to be saying the right things but execution and implementation is sorely lacking. Level 3 has some of the most brilliant people I've ever worked with, leadership needs to support and reward collaboration and instead of those who work their way up the ladder on the bodies of their co-workers.

Pros

Some of the best people you could ever imagine working with

Cons

If you're not in Broomfield, you're nowhere

Advice to Senior Management

Stop continuing to shuffle the inner-circle between the various sr. leadership positions. All it does is mask their failures as the deck get re-shuffled before their incompetence is exposed.

Pros

Overall I am happy. I know I make less than my counterparts, but I have flexibility, can pay my mortgage and I have good relationships with most everyone I work with.

Cons

The only exception to that is a lousy manager. There are many people here that want to be a hero and get noticed. They will take your ideas and act as if they are theirs. This is worse when they go to management. They are so needy to be the next big thing and will step on anyone to get ahead.

Advice to Senior Management

Think before you hire incompentent and unethical managers. They can make or break a team. That is the sure fire way to lower morale. People do not quit their jobs they quit their managers. Stop promoting bad behavior!

Pros

Competitive Salary, Flexible Hours, Decent Benefits

Cons

Management completely out of touch with market...tend to look at sales as a one-size-fits-all process. Some of the worst systems and tools you'll ever see...the company is one giant Dilbert cartoon.

Advice to Senior Management

Spend some time in the trenches and see first-hand how screwed up things are before trying to randomly re-shape the company (which seems to occur every 6-9 months)