Nortel Networks Reviews in Dallas-Fort Worth, TX Area

Pros

Nortel, despite scaling back quite a bit, still has a very good benefits packages. You get almost 30 days of paid time off (between vacation days, corporate holidays, and a floating "personal holiday"), which really helps with work/life balance. Nortel, at least in my experience, has been very tolerant of office employees who want to work at home occasionally.

Cons

The obvious downside is that the company isn't doing too well. You never know how long your job is going to be around. The cost cutting has others effects you can see around the workplace. Things just aren't maintained the way they used to be - printers are frequently broken, projectors hard to find, etc.

Advice to Senior Management

This company needs major restructuring and cost cotting. Make those hard decisions and make them sooner rather than later. It will make the employees happier to have a better idea of where the company is going.

Pros

Family oriented company but with workforce reductions, its getting harder and harder to take time off without impacting job performance. Very casual, laid back work atmosphere and those that have hung in there are a great bunch of folks.

Cons

Multitude of systems that don't talk to each other, manual intervention of tasks to keep things rolling. More and more, the screws are tightening on the front line workers as if 90% of the company is worried about performance improvement and the other 10% is actually doing the work... reminds me of that Office Space episode where everyone keeps asking for the same "TPS" report over and over....

Advice to Senior Management

Nortel is in survival mode right now, though our senior leadership team is relatively new, they stepped into this mess and with the current economic issues, it's only getting worse. I respect the fact that they appear to be here for the long haul.

Pros

Nortel has still some good people which is why I would ever work there. They have good health, 401k plan. Good industry level matching. Used to be good to work on real advanced research and development.

Cons

Layoffs, Layoffs, layoffs. It is still called Survivor - Nortel. Nortel has drained most of its brain power during this layoffs. The people and brain cells which created bleeding edge technology are gone. It is a bare bones company with no real future. The core R&D is really reduced, and now that is planned to be outsourced to China.

Advice to Senior Management

1. Focus on your core competencies and stop second guessing your decisions.
2. Stop making management changes every few months, that does not help employee moral. Directors, VP are move around every few months, it makes everyone nervous.
3. Don't think outsourcing will reduce your cost. Outsource does reduce some cost when you start, but will reduce product quality and in turn have issues show up in front of customers. It will be too late.
4. Start doing what Nortel did when they were Bell labs, Northen Telecom, research and development.

Pros

you get great experience, they provide anyone the opportunity to work for the company,access to new and emerging technology,and there is cross training in multiple fields

Cons

company not doing so well, many layoffs

Advice to Senior Management

invest in your young talent,show respect and compensate them acordingly

Pros

Salary. Nothing else. Benefits have eroded, all in the favor of Nortel and none in the favor of the employee. Pay increases have been non-existent for the past 6 years and bonuses paid out at 50% or less for the same period. Thus, the one reason to remain with this company is quickly approaching the point of no return.

Cons

Long hours
Constant threat of layoff / RIF
Constant reorganization
Lack of direction strategically, other than survival
Being 3 years into a three year turnaround plan, with no noticeable progress. 10 for 1 reverse split retired stock but stock price is once again hovering at $1 (or $0.10, pre-dilution)

Advice to Senior Management

Take some business classes, preferably MBA, and apply the fundamentals. If you do not have the requisite skillset for the role, step aside and let someone who does take over for you. Billions have been lost on malfeasance, greed and outright fraud.

Formulate a plan and execute. It IS that simple.

Pros

Diverse company -
Mutliple techonolgies to work.
To get experience in different areas.
Global Compaany Locations.
If people are lazy it is relaxed place to work as well, due to this reason lot of people with zeal to work and has rocket thrust in them found Nortel not right place for them.

Cons

No Job security - Every Information session from Top Executives bring one news for sure - Layoffs ..... i mean inevitable layoffs.
No Career developement - Not much invested in career develpment for employees.
Highly de-motivational atmosphere - Even leaders in organization are loosing motivation.
Sinking Ship - Do i need to say more, the company is less then 0.01% in last 8 years.

Advice to Senior Management

Employee career path definition.
Change intermediate Management, as top management does have good ideas, but intermediate Management do not let ideas flow to the grass root level. This is why there is a constant decline, eventhought some very good measures were proposed or introduced by top management.

Pros

They have good employees and good benefit packages. The people of Nortel are bright engineers and they do have a lot of innovation in their careers. The management respected their employees.

Cons

Layoff continues too long from 2000 until present. It decreases the moral of people who work there. Another thing is the top management does have clear vision. Change frequently at the top-level management does not help either.

Advice to Senior Management

The senior management must focus on empower engineers. It also needs to make sure where the company headed is right one because they will not be able to start and later cancel projects indefinitely without finance consequences. Moreover they cannot continue selling pieces of the company for their short-term issues.

Pros

Compensation, brand name recognition, flexible schedules

Cons

Uncertain market, perpetual negative cycles

Advice to Senior Management

Continuing education...take advantage of it and stop being complacent with your positions

Pros

Challenging work, leading edge technology, good pay. The product base addresses the needs of our customer base, and is generally leading the industry in innovation. The company generally recognizes the individual's contribution and often show earnest attemts to include the indiviual in the decision processes. The facilities are execllent and the company provides most state of the art tools for the employees. There is a strong commitment to include community projects in the workplace and support those needing help. (United Way, Food Bank, School supplies). The heath plan is reasonable and there is an attempt to provide preventive care. The 401 K plan is reasonable.

Cons

Uncertain future. "New" management plays by numbers only with little regard for optimization of resources/investment or Best ROI, rather only looks at how much can be cut as fast as possible. Too short sighted. The stick has been "hammered" to take it from $89 to $0.56. The "New" mangement team has not been successful in reversing this. The frequent stop/start decisons hurt and the morale is seriously affected. Morale is very low mostly because of the massive insecurity in the future - "Will I still have a job in 6 months?"
There is an extreme lack of understanding that requests for open feedback in large meeting, with the fear of reprisals dosen't work. HR seems clueless and have impleneted extensive lumbersome processes not adding any value.

Advice to Senior Management

Get and use input from the "on line troops" who know what's really happening.

Pros

You can balance your personal and professional life.

Cons

No career growth prospects though being a pioneer in the Digital systems

Advice to Senior Management

Cut the Management positions (reducing bureaucracy) rather than cutting the engineering positions who are the core asset of any R & D organization