NBC Universal Cable Reviews

Pros

People, opportunities, pay and interesting brands.

Cons

Highly competitive internally, and inwardly focused.

Advice to Senior Management

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Pros

good name to have on resume

Cons

bad environment to work in from an HR perspective

Pros

Easy
Non Challenging
Routine
Good Pay
Good Benefits
You can succeed if you keep your head low

Cons

Boring
Sweat Shop
Unrewarding
Location
Long hours
You can get crushed by upper management if you take risks and they fail

Advice to Senior Management

Respect your employees more and stop with the scorecards. It really demoralizes people and makes them feel like factory workers

Pros

Because the company is large, there are many opportunities to advance or change the direction of your job or career.

Cons

As a larger company, it can sometimes be difficult to get things done quickly or to communicate with all stakeholders.

Pros

Average to good pay, great if you need time off, professional environment to be part of the NBC experience as well

Cons

Little interest in hearing your take on a matter, bosses are interested in kiss-ups. You will not get ahead by simply doing your work and being polite to all. One screw up and you're out the door.

Advice to Senior Management

Give employees more of a chance to speak up. Give them a second chance.

Pros

Great resume builder, good connections and a growth oriented atmosphere. The level of professional know-how is extremely high and everyone encouraged you to be as involved as possible.

Cons

Inconvenient office location, poor follow-through regarding contract extensions and a few false promises

Advice to Senior Management

Improve the contract program and more clearly define opportunities for growth once the contract period ends.

Pros

talented and driven employees, good teamwork, efficient and organized, great exposure, intimate work environment, vast resources, good benefits, entertainment industry, steady and stable, good opportunity for career growth

Cons

understaffed and overworked, low pay, little recognition or praise, little attention to work-life balance, uneven career advancement opportunities, success is tempered by broadcast network's setbacks, very corporate and beaurocratic

Advice to Senior Management

provide employees with adequate pay, recognition, and attention to work-life balance in order to make them more efficient and strengthen their connection to the company

Pros

Its a way into the television business. Being in a big market, there is a lot of pressure on everyone's part to do a good job because a lot of people are going to see what you do. When it as all said and done and you do a good job, you feel really good about yourself.

Cons

You can get lost in the shuffle. If you are not one of the big wigs, you seem to go unnoticed.

Advice to Senior Management

Train entry level employees for future advancement. When you have people working there butts off, you need to take a look at them and see the potential. Don't just keep them where they are because they make your life easier. Also, don't keep other employees around just because you feel bad about letting them go. If they are severely under-preforming, let the ones excelling have more chances.

Pros

There are so many opportunities to work and learn beyond your department. There's always room to shift between cable networks, since NBC Universal owns a handful of them. They're all very reputable and very entertaining. Personally, I prefer entertainment over informational programming, so this is the place to be. Although rewards are few and in between, despite having a great performance quarter, I still love it here. In exchange for little reward, there is also little pressure and stress while working. But the need to succeed is still there, there is a great balance for the work ethic the company is searching for.

Cons

NBC Universal is like the parent that never paid enough attention to their children. So if the child got a billion straight A's, there's barely a pat on the back. So the main downside is the lack of reward and support from management when a job is done well. That downside obviously stems from the fact that NBC Universal is a very large company where everyone can get lost in the giant sea of employees. The lack of attention that the big wigs give to their employees is not so pleasant, but then again that might drive people to do a better job and to outshine.

Advice to Senior Management

Reward your employees! I'm sure budget is not the reason why you can't throw a mini-party for great ratings or maybe give some beers after work hours. Boost the morale please.

Pros

You can't beat the product -- which is to say the TV shows and specials the company creates and broadcasts. If you like working in entertainment and media, if you like knowing backstage gossip and info on your favorite shows and stars, if you're a fan, then this is the place for you. Since the company is part of GE, the benefits package is fantastic. Even the company cafeteria is good! And the fact that you walk right past the Tonight Show studios to reach it every day is pretty neat.

Cons

Senior management -- VP's and Senior VP's -- consistently didn't know their ass from their elbow. They might have MBA's, but they didn't know (and worse, really didn't care!) a damn thing about how to do the actual day-to-day boots on the ground kind of work that we grunts were doing. They were also unreceptive to suggestions from staff. Hours for the grunts were very long, because of the need for on-site synchronization with the weekly TV schedule, but VP's were usually gone from the office by 6:01 PM. Consequently, staff turnover was unusually high, resulting in continual losses of institutional knowledge, and morale was low.

Advice to Senior Management

Guess what: we geeks do, in fact, know if you're bullsh*ting or not. It's bad enough when you do it to us, but when you lie to your bosses (some of whom we do respect) right in front of us, it's all we can do to not to mute the conference call we're on and talk about your idiocy while you suck up and promise things that we all know you can't deliver. Also, if you're planning on having a weekly "vote online" segment for your reality show, perhaps you ought to let your technical staff know about that before the show is actually on the air. And when you launch a new game online, perhaps you ought not to send out the press release about it before such a thing actually exists. And when you buy a wonderful and much-loved web community to add to your stable of websites and make your bottom line look good, perhaps you shouldn't continually blow off and belittle its founders, the smart people who had made it something you thought was worth buying in the first place.