Level 3 Communications Reviews

Pros

Great people to work with. They are always in the trenches with you and willing to lend a hand without worrying about getting credit for it.

Cons

If you are a great employee then be prepared to get stuck where you're at! Management feels it's necessary to keep people where they are at to prevent "losing head count" in their dept. You may even get a less than fair review just to keep you under your current management and stall you from advancing or moving to a dept that may be better suited to your skills.

Advice to Senior Management

Let your better employees move up and train others to be successful instead of "pigeon holing" them.

Pros

Great people to work with.

Cons

Stock price has been hovering at a dollar for the last 3 years.

Advice to Senior Management

Continue to flatten the organization and make the hard calls

Pros

Pay is decent and Medical is pretty good. 401 K is better then some especially in this economic climate. Moderate flexibility.

Cons

Personality driven corporate culture to the max. At Level 3 its of utmost importance to look and sound the part . Use of prototypical style business lexicon strongly encouraged and rewarded. Schmoozing and popularity are much greater conduits to success at Level 3 then technical ability. Competence neither rewarded or punished except at the absolute extremes on both ends. Consolidation of various acquired companies has largely been a failure. IT systems are cumbersome making order processing slow and laborious. Inter-departmental cooperation is non-existent. Problems are almost impossible to rectify quickly since areas of responsibility are so poorly defined and enforced and change constantly. Projects and initatives passed off to employees as vital and critical are abandoned or discontinued without explanation. Things are just thrown against the wall to see what sticks. Employees are expected to know how to navigate the systems of what amounts to 6 or 7 companies with virtually no training. Use of dubious metrics makes each month a departmental "beat the numbers" game.

Advice to Senior Management

Management needs to address and correct the root cause of problems instead of putting the boot to the employees throat to compensate for poor processes and systems. Need less Yes Men and more technical and process wonks.

Pros

Vacation time and pay are good. Some managers are flexible with hours and time off.

Cons

This is the worst work environment and job I have had in my professional career. The only reason I have stayed is for the vacation time and salary. I have been bullied by management and peers on many occasions. There are virtually no opportunities for advancement unless you "play the game" and know the right people. The people that work hard and do the job will never be rewarded. Get out while you can. It's not a career unless you schmooze with the right people and play politics. Typical cutthroat corporate environment.

Advice to Senior Management

Stop the politics and listen to people actually doing the job if you want to stay around as a company. Fire the inept senior management.

Pros

Very smart people with big ideas

Cons

Very poorly aligned leading to conflict and chaos

Advice to Senior Management

Better alignment, better goal setting with linked compensation.

Pros

The pay is great and the medical benefits are good. The commute time (at least for me) is also good.

Cons

The benefits have been eroding over the years so there is no guarantee that what I said in the pros section will still be true soon. Level 3 can be an okay place to work but you better negotiate a high starting salary. Many people have not received a raise in over 3 years. The bonuses have not been paid out at a high level for the past few years either.

Level 3 has been described as a toxic environment and many people are happy to leave.

Advice to Senior Management

Pay more attention to what your people need. It seems to be going unnoticed by upper level management that many people are jumping ship. This should be a warning sign but it doesn't seem to be taken as such.

Pros

The people at Level 3 that are in the trenches are very committed to making the company successful

Cons

Not much room for internal growth

Advice to Senior Management

With the job market in this field opening up, employees need to be kept happy

Pros

Extremely low effort required. The parking lot isn't full until 9:30AM, and it's emptying out around 3:30 each day. A colleague had enough down-time while working there to start and operate his own web-based business.

Cons

The people who work here are corporate archetypes. This IS "Office Space." The initial learning-curve involves lots of jargon. Everyone here is "swamped," and "so busy," until you walk buy their office and find them surfing the internet, taking a 2-hour lunch or having nonsensical, pointless meetings ALL THE TIME. If you really want to accomplish something in life, this is not the place for you. If you love playing office, it's a childhood dream come true.

Advice to Senior Management

Communication here is abyssmal. It's a personality culture -- if you've been there awhile and someone likes you, you WILL become a director. I know of 5 personal assistants who became directors at Level 3.

Pros

Level 3 has an exceptional Network with what seems to be unlimited capacity, extensive product & solutions portfolio. Above average benefits--health, 401k, options. Above average base pay. Excellent reputation as a wholesale service provider. Trying to make inroads in the B2B space. Good niche player (ie: high bandwidth IP solutions or private line)

Cons

High level of constant employee turn-over at every level. Management relatively weak, but relatively new. Poor internal communications and resources.
A victim of Siebel that is not the best solution for CRM, proposal, and order entry for Level 3. Customer support is lacking-ie: the sales rep is the primary point of contact for service issues, billing issues, pre/post sales engineering issues, services changes such as adds, moves, changes, disconnects.
Simply put, back office support is weak. Poor marketing. Not recognized as a legitimate enterprise solutions provider--primarily a niche player. Not a recognized by customers as a business partner. Comp plan needs improvement. Minimal or no match on 401k. Options arae a great perk, but stock price/performance is weak/volatile.

Advice to Senior Management

Siebel has to go--too much of a hinderance toward rapid proposal turn around. The system is too cumbersome, not user friendly, and cannot support the many nuances required to quote solutions with a lot of customizable options.
Need to provide a much simplified pricing structure ( ie: flat rate access on lower bandwidth speeds 45mb and T-1.
Level 3 has a reputation for being sales focused. This is also recognized by customers when the company goes into "last week of the month" mode when a full court press is made to close any and all business for the month. A customer focused approach combined with a solution/consultative focused approach will accomplish the same end result while also gaining the respect of customers.

Pros

Good benefits. Decent pay. Not micro-managed. Good local team. Top of the line network.

Cons

Senior management is competely lost. Excessive,cumbersome processes. Network maintenance and installation teams are dangerously understaffed. CYA Processes and paperwork trump customer service, installation quality and service delivery.

Advice to Senior Management

Fire everyone from VP level on up. How do you have one of the best longhaul fiber networks and fail as a company? Level3 has found a way. Level3 has tried every change in the book except the one that needs to be made: NEW SENIOR MANAGEMENT. That's the one constant in all of this mess. Do the math. We're not all crazy, YOU are.