Nortel Networks Reviews in Dallas-Fort Worth, TX Area

Pros

It has quite a few good people in the company, and dedicated to their works, and have been there for a very long time.

Cons

It is a very corrupt place, it is basically who you know, not what you know type of environment. The chance of getting promoted is only someone left or died.

Advice to Senior Management

Your actions have led to the company's bankruptcy. Many people got impacted because of that.

Pros

Cultural Diversity
Ability to Telecommute
Highly skilled employees to work with

Cons

In bankruptcy
Very few employees left
No future with the company

Advice to Senior Management

Finalize the bankruptcy and move on.

Pros

Best Reasons: Opportunity to move into different positions within the company. Rewarded for work on special projects. Laid Back environment.

Cons

Massive Layoffs since 2000. The employees that were recently laid off prior to backruptcy recieved no severance. There were too many layers of management.

Advice to Senior Management

Too many layers of management. Too many acquisitions that did not add value to the company. Failure to merge with other players when concolidation occured.

Pros

Before the fall, it was a great place to work with talented people. Benefits were good and pay was competitive. Leadership is always a mixed bag, but low and middle management not too bad.

Cons

Going bankrupt. Hiring outside execs that handled the situation poorly.

Advice to Senior Management

Think of all the people you put out of work.

Pros

Very bright people, very polite and respectful, management was very open to career changes, challenging work on new technology

Cons

Nortel did a lot of in-house development of tools/development environment. Experience with these tools does not make you marketable.

Advice to Senior Management

Next time, try to avoid bankruptcy. Have a better vision of what the market will need.

Pros

The pay is very competitive for the telcom field. The flexible work schedules are very difficult to beat in any field.

Cons

Sr. leadership team is completely incompetent as chapter eleven would indicate. It boggles ones mind how most of them are still employed.

Advice to Senior Management

Sell all divisions and terminate yourselves for the sake of the remaining employees and your customers. There is wonderful technical talent here that has been completely wasted.

Pros

The technical competence of the architects is really good. The amount of intellectual property though declining has been a hallmark at nortel.

Cons

Legacy style management finds it very hard to compete in the non traditional telecom markets. With the traditional telecom market a dinasaur it was a matter of time before what happened has happened.

Advice to Senior Management

None .. hopefully yall have been all fired and replaced by competent management that actually has a strategy and not just pissin in the wind.

Pros

Great people and great culture, strong commitment to work/life balance, the individual group in which I worked were all very dedicated and passionate about their work and my direct manager was probably the best boss I've ever had. Nothing like going to work in shorts, a t-shirt, and flip flops. And of course, at various times when I was there Nortel had industry-best, fabulous technology. It always was a strong engineering company - with a big appetite for hiring. Good times.

Cons

History will probably look more kindly on the captain of the Titanic than Nortel executive management circa 1995-2009. RIP my friend.

Advice to Senior Management

All that really comes to mind at this point is Bluto's speech to the Deltas - was it over when the Germans bombed Pearl Bailey? Nothing is over until we say it's over. That sort of thing. I'll miss Nortel.

Pros

At one time it was a leading company with great products and technology. Well known for R&D and innovation. Global company with $1B or more in good days.

Cons

Poor management, leadership and loss of focus in a competitive landscape

Advice to Senior Management

Get some leaders who can manage the financial aspect as well as product. Need an evanglist like John Chambers of Cisco leading this type of company.

Pros

Great people and leading edge technology. Always challanging and interesting work to get involved with. Excellent Engineering community where people help each other.

Cons

Management (or mis-management) has driven the company into the ground with their decisions. Poor choice of positioning the company and its assets has resulted in fire sales of whole divisions and hence let the air out of the employees.

Advice to Senior Management

Too late now but don't make the same mistakes elsewhere. Some of the programs (six sigma) although useful, were not implemented correctly. Sr. Mgmt put their own pride and their own interests in front of the company and the employees.