Nortel Networks Reviews in Ottawa, ON Area

Pros

Great colleagues. I work with some very smart and dedicated people. The flex hours are great. Management allows you to take time off to take your child to an appointment, etc. The opportunity to work with some fantastic cutting edge technologies. Great campus in Ottawa and beautiful surroundings.

Cons

8 years of downsizing and layoffs. No career development opportunities. Constantly wonder about job security. No opportunities for internal mobility. Pay is not great if you were hired during the tech down turn. Too many senior employees in the company which means there is no room for advancement.

Advice to Senior Management

None

Pros

Flexcible working hours.
Balance life and work

Cons

Excessive process, constant downsize pressure, inefficience.

Advice to Senior Management

Need to know how to distinguish who are the people that have no time to talk but can get job done and who only knows how to talk

Pros

Good place to learn new technology. Many documents are available for self learning.

Cons

too much overhead in management; little opportunity to be promoted.
Nortel talks too much on cut management overhead but no result.
Regardless, it might be little chance for Nortel to comeback strong.

Advice to Senior Management

Let expert make technical decisions rather than give orders directly.
Pay respect to hard-working employees and communicate more with them.

Pros

Satisfying work management actually helps you to choose the work you are interested in.
Working with new technologies so there is a lot of learning going on always.
Good work/life balance - company allows you to work from home.
Pay is decent compared to other similar companies.

Cons

Poor company performance so there is cost cutting in everything even the most essential stuff. There is a constant fear of lay offs, no one knows when they will get the pink slip - no job security at all. Hard to work in place where the morale is so low.

Advice to Senior Management

Try to keep your employee morals high, they are your best assets.

Pros

Nortel Networks deals with exciting, relevant technology. Compensation was generous, in terms of pay and vacation. They give employees the time between Christmas and New Year's off, and will also top off your salary to 70% should you choose to take time off for a new baby. The

Cons

The instability caused by recent accounting scandals and the downsizing led to poor morale. Cuts were made by upper management without understanding what it was they were cutting.

Advice to Senior Management

Workers fearing for their jobs every day does not make for a positive work environment.

Pros

The people are friendly. Lots of programs for employees to get involved in inter social activities and the community. Managers are fairly understanding to your needs and will work with the employee. The work from home policy is a great way to be green, and improve employee satisfaction. The campus I work at is especially beautiful, with ample parking and beautiful nature surroundings. We are also a very diversified company that pays a very competitive salary compared to other high tech.

Cons

The stock shows little signs of improvement. Layoffs are always an issue, and job security is hard to come by.

Advice to Senior Management

I'm not sure what you can do, it's a tough marketplace for us.

Pros

In the good old days, you had the opportunity to work on the latest technologies and products. The size of the company allowed for significant mobility (eg, from carrier optical to wireless to enterprise telephony). Pay and benefits (eg, pension) was good, and if you wanted to (and were competant) you could be a "lifer". Or you could use the experience as a springboard to heading for a startup. R&D teams were highly motivated and professional.

Cons

Now, the endless round of layoffs have eliminated any sense of job security or employee loyalty to either the company or even their team. Layoffs have also resulted in far too few people being asked to do far too much. Work/life balance is seriously eroded.

Advice to Senior Management

Resign. Failing that, eliminate at least two layers of management and plow the savings back into the working ranks. Accept responsibility for the company's failures and freeze executive bonuses. Move Mike Z. into operations and get a CEO who understands the industry. Stop "6 sigma" and all similar programs which consume resources better spent on generating actual revenue.

Pros

The company seems to be turning into a very younger work place. With all the new grads coming in the last 3 years, things have changed and the company can be a fun place to work. A new initiative was introduced few months ago "Job Swap program" can possibly be a great opportunity for more senior employees to advance their career and develop more skills. Salaries are fairly competitive to other companies (However didn't find the bonus to be great-but this is group and organization dependent)

Cons

hard to say you have a secure job
bonuses are not great
performance review with MUST have each group divided into the following categories can have a lot of negative impact:
10% Least effective 20% highly effective 70% Satisfactory
Each group MUST have these break downs after performance review.

The problem with this approach is that some times information sharing is not done because employees worry about their performance going down by providing their knowledge to others. Others tend to go home and continue to do work just to keep their performance level high. So you can see work/life balance turns into a mess. I see this happening more in the support organizations.

Advice to Senior Management

Need to provide employees better ways to advance professionally

Pros

Very good pay, lots of very knowledgeable people who are willing to help you learn. There seems to be an institutionalized attitude to respecting peoples ability to strike a work-life balance, and allowing people to take time off when then want to.

Cons

No career advancement opportunities, even for the top 10%. Very conservative culture that does not like to deal with issues out in the open. Because of the focus on 'integrity' the lawyers run the show to a fault. The company is really spread too thin, and doesn't have great communication with their customers.

Advice to Senior Management

When new programs, like 'least effective' ratings, are introduced the management has to be very clear as to the benefits and site real-world examples of how the system works. But then, the management team really has to stick to their guns when applying these programs, because Nortel is an environment very resistant to change.

Pros

I think one of the best reasons to work at Nortel today is that there's a real chance for change and a return to a more dynamic and competitive company. I think MikeZ is trying to execute on the right plan and gets generally good marks from the analysts. Similarly, John Roese, the CTO, seems to be meeting success in turning around the R&D approach and instilling pride back into the R&D group. What it takes is the next leap forward to disrupt the current playing field. Nortel has done it before and perhaps can do it again.

Cons

The down side of working at Nortel currently is that despite what I said above, the greater global economy and Asian competitors are putting incredible financial pressures on the company at a time when, quite frankly, it remains to be seen if this storm can be weathered. Nortel is a shadow of its former self and is so focused on cost cutting now that in addition to travel and the G&A grind-down that are usual first steps, Nortel is squeezing every dollar it can from things like catering at large meetings. Some will say "good, that's what they need to do" but it does make for a depressing environment which when lumped together with a seemingly ever falling stock and continued reminders of layoffs as yet another person you know gets that tap on the shoulder, makes you wonder if you'd really be better off somewhere else.

Advice to Senior Management

Generally, keep doing what you're doing because I can't think of anything better and it seems to be in line with what critics think should be done. One thing though, have we over-rotated on the whole "let's rehabilitate ourselves" schtick. Multiple courses on ethics, conflict of interest, etc., more HR feelgood programs on us all putting our brains together to come up with new ways to save, etc. Yes we all need to be responsible and some training on responsibilities is always required but Corporate Services needs to lay off. Leave us some time to do actual work related to customer projects.