Motorola Reviews in Phoenix, AZ Area

Pros

Of all the companies I've worked for, Motorola was far and away the most technically oriented. Advanced engineers, technically oriented managers and was ahead of its time in quality assurance in the development programs. The benefits for pursuing education were also outstanding.

Cons

Never really knew what the upper management was thinking. It was hard to understand how your role fit into the longer term picture of our operations.

Advice to Senior Management

The huge emphasis on 6 Sigma and quality control made it difficult to do some relatively simple tasks at time.

Pros

Good growth opportunites.
Ability to change groups within the company.
Good process and CMMI levels to follow for a robust product release.

Cons

Shrinking size in Valley of the sun (tempe, chandler - price road). More locations are getting shut down and consolidated in Arizona.

Advice to Senior Management

Most of the projects are now handled overseas (outsourced) causing the expertise to shrink here in United States of America.

Pros

Good pay and reasonable benefits.

Cons

This company does not have a future.

Advice to Senior Management

It's time to face the facts: running after near term investor return has dismantled a company whos core competency was engineering vision that positively impacted society, which, by the way, made a handsome investor return. You are now saddled with a a dieing dog. Learn your lesson and move on.

Pros

Work with very nice, competent people. Respect for people isn't just a slogan. Interesting projects in every part of the company. Occasionally some awesome creations. Less "warring tribes" mentality as tribes keep being ejected.

Cons

Frequent tendency to be insular at all levels ... reinventing the wheel, NIH, lack of visionary leadership. Lay-offs, sell-offs, spin-offs.

Advice to Senior Management

Invent something really new. Not marketing hype new. I mean new.

Pros

Sure, every workplace has its pros / cons. While at Motorola I really enjoyed my team and staff. Everyone was competent and worked hard. We all enjoyed the work and supporting each other.

Cons

Business need dictates change. However there were some wild schedule changes that really caused frustration in the team. The changes were what caused weekend and holiday work to meet the deadlines.

Advice to Senior Management

While Motorola is technical company the marketing aspect definitely needs work. Market justification along with customer input is really needed to ensure the right product goes to market. I saw development on products that ended up being scrapped because there just wasn't a market for them. Great products but not what our customers wanted at the time.

Pros

I worked as a software engineering intern at Motorola Labs in Tempe. The workplace is very laid back. My coworkers and my manager were nice and supportive. I enjoyed the possibility to work on many different projects and I learned a lot of things in the process. I was given total freedom in managing my time.

Cons

The only downside of working for Motorola Labs is that the company is cutting funds for research; therefore I could sometime sense that the overall mood was low. I had done a similar internship in 2006, when the financial problem were less serious, and I could definitely tell the difference.

Advice to Senior Management

My manager was great. I did not spend there enough time to understand how the upper level management was running the company.

Pros

Motorola has some very cool things to work on, they provide you with the ability to go and create your own positions, do your own job and continue to add value where needed. they always were supportive when there were things to do and to get done. That was one of the biggest benefits, they had fortune 500 benefits and overall were a great company, fair in the way they handled their performance review policies, raises were okay, but dependent on the health of the company, which for now isn't that good and hasn't been in ten years. Some good technical jobs

Cons

Company has been having problems for the last ten years, they have been trying to find their way, focus on what it is they want to do, in the mean time they have tossed off all the components that made Motorola famous and respected. The semiconductor section...computer group, automotive...gone, they seem to want to focus on cell phones, which are very good by the way, but they are in a rut as far as technology goes...used to be an industry leader...now they are following, not very impressive for one of the premire companies in american history! seems as if they are loosing their way.

Advice to Senior Management

fix the company

Pros

Travel Opps, scope to move within business in larger employee groups, there used to be great opps to move overseas, but that has been completed stopped, no one moves and gets expat opportunities. Used to be a great name on your resume, sadly thats not the case any more

Cons

Lack of business Opps. Poor growth potential, limited travel and Training, the overall business is sinking.
Great opps for diverse employees, but limited opps to promote from within now due to failed RPA

Advice to Senior Management

Exit
Cut the dividend, reduce staffing in R&D, fold/ spin off the GI business

Pros

The people and the opportunity to learn new things.

Cons

Uncertainty of your job as the company continues to loose market shares to competitors.

Advice to Senior Management

To be upfront and honest about where the direction of the company is going and how it may or may not affect the area you are working in.

Pros

Large hi-tech company with knowledgeable staff. Some best practices in hi-tech development and product technologies but not consistently used. Reasonable benefits with some opportunity for stock-options at higher grades. Well known brand and product set. International diversity makes this an excellent place to practice multi-site development or to design product for international markets. Some positive history of risk taking.

Cons

Unstable corporate structure with an upper management team that lacks in-depth understanding of the markets or products served. This could result in some wild changes in organization, mission or direction. Serving a market (telecom) that is highly volatile and not performing well in terms of market share. Lacks scale of major competitors and nimbleness of start-ups.

Advice to Senior Management

Suggest that senior management increase use of internal talent to improve product and market understanding. Probably could use to create some independent teams (like original Razor group) to address new markets quickly. Current structure and process is excellent for refining product but stifles creativity and speed necessary to survive.