NAVTEQ Reviews

Pros

- There are good people working here
- Gives you a chance to travel
- Looks good on your resume

Cons

- Product owners have far too much power and have been known to yell at developers.
- No/little information is shared with employees, had to rely on the grapevine for news
- Asked to deliver things (and be motivated) days after announcing office was closing.
- Priorities and tasks constantly change

Advice to Senior Management

Share some information with the employees. Even if it's bad news, we would prefer to know.

Pros

Good benefits, work life balance

Cons

No focus on career management

Advice to Senior Management

More communications for employees

Pros

Small operation in Canada.
Some room for growth.
Benifits are ok.
Flexiability to travel.
Annual performance review.

Cons

No flex time.
Young team.
Average salary.
Moving in the direction of outsourcing work to temporary labour for field collection and we are sending work to India to code.

Advice to Senior Management

Create specialized jobs.
Be more open minded in roles for employees.

Pros

Good work /life balance
No high pressure to work overtime,
Openish communication from management
Opportunity to grow now that it is merging with Nokia

Cons

Mediocre pace
Product management out of touch with market
Business priorities are not right most of the time
Artificial pressure regarding deadlines can cause low product quality
Product management does not talk to sales which yields unrealistic features and priorities

Advice to Senior Management

Get more competent product managers that actually talk to sales
Push the company to stay ahead of the market, rather than trying to catch up five years behind the others

Pros

Challenging work
Casual work environment
Great move towards Agile Development

Cons

There is lack of focus towards innovation.

Pros

Global company, so opportunities for travel are high.

Cons

Since Nokia bought us its as if its a different company, no chance of promotion, no chance for advancement, no information, management are a bunch of ladder climbing morons.

Advice to Senior Management

Quit, let someone with a brain run the company. Putting that Nokia nit with Michael Halberhh in charge was the deat knell for Navteq and its employees.

Pros

-Amazing benefits- you will not see a better benefits package elsewhere
-Modernized office, new equipment, updated kitchen amenities (Chicago)
-Global company- opportunities to liaise with international teams, offices
-Casual work environment (Could be a con for some used to opposite environment)

Cons

-Hiring process is one of the most prolonged I've been through; unprofessional HR process
-Many cliques within the office; if you do not associate with one or more commonly are not a proper quirky fit to associate with one, you will find it hard to work around constant chatter circles and will feel the impact wholly.
-Opportunities for advancement are rare
-Salary is weak compared to other companies
-Awful communication from upper-management level to associated employees. Often times information is kept between upper-management until a situation becomes critical, then small parts are shared with remainder of team in hopes of quick "get it done yesterday" fixes.
-Awful communication between teams working on common projects. Technical-based teams and project management/upper-management often have a very hard time coordinating and meeting needs-- Repetitive, backtracking update meetings as a result.

Advice to Senior Management

Better communication starts with sharing information from the start. When an employee is hired, it would be to your benefit time-wise to take a week to go over proprietary methodology, rather than watching as the employee struggles to figure everything out on his/her own.

Pros

Plenty of opportunities to learn new skills (at least in my position); hasn't cut travel to the bone as so many others have; decent benefits.

Cons

Too many layers of organization; too many unexplained acronyms and buzzwords; 10% bonuses only for higher-ups, not for the people who actually do the work.

Advice to Senior Management

Flatten the organization, and share more of the wealth - like most technology companies, NAVTEQ could get by without managers but would collapse without managees.

Pros

Very Nice people and Casual Work Environment. Very transparent work culture promotion specially with implemenation of Agile. Hard work is rewarded by Management. Close integration with NOKIA.

Cons

Lack of Educational Support. Lack of Technical Vision for future. Unclear communcation across the company with Nokia Integration. Unclear Roles in the new organization.

Advice to Senior Management

Have to communciate to employees with all the new changes and define new roles in the organization. Have to be agressive in implemeting the new vision.

Pros

-It had a strong entrepreneurial spirit on making it happened (all gone)
-It valued and cared about its employees (all gone too)

Cons

-Some leaders are spineless
-All talk or making everything look good on paper (e.g. powerpoints) and not about doing the right things

Advice to Senior Management

Nokia should have spun off NAVTEQ back into a public company instead of absorbing onto this burning platform. This would be an excellent case study on how to ruin a market leader into a component of a sorry corporation (Nokia).