PAETEC Reviews

Pros

Initially, a very good place to work for. However, since it went public the company has placed more emphasis on customer order completion rather than customer order quality and employee appreciation.

Cons

A sales driven organization (without any regard for the Back Office) in every sense of the word. Employees are expected to maintain multiple job roles without the true support of upper management. 12-14 hours days, including weekends, are the norm, not the exception (even for salaried-exempt employees). If you are looking for a place of employment where Operations and Sales truly work together, this is not the place. At Paetec the sale trumps all.

Advice to Senior Management

Get back to the company's core focus - customer service - both external and internal. At one time, the company prided itself on customer service, now it prides itself on service in general.

Pros

work environment is nice, management and colleagues are friendly and respectful

Cons

benefits and pay have become less than average, zero education or growth opportunities

Advice to Senior Management

allow room for growth

Pros

Always a challenge but not over the top. Work balance is awesome, upper managment is always avaliable. Investment in the network and equipment to keep it going is top notch.

Cons

Comp was good before downturn since then 401K cost of living increase and other benifits have been reduced / eliminated.

Advice to Senior Management

Salary and benifits are comming back slowly as fincials improve. Managment does what it can for the employees and communication is excellent

Pros

Growth - The company is growing very fast. This growth will allow employees to venture into a lot of different areas.
Employee focused - Decisions are still made with the employee in mind. Friday company call still occurs which is unheard of in most companies. My experience with management is they are very employee focused and will do whatever is needed to help balance work/outside life for an employee.

Cons

Growth- The fast growth has affected customers. The service end has taken a hit, but the company is focusing on fixing the issue.
Compensation- When PAETEC started people accepted lower salaries to work there. Today it is different and management needs to understand the name brand of PAETEC isn't as strong as it used to be for potential new employees or existing employees. People won't necessarily stay

Advice to Senior Management

Continue to learn from the kenan migration and take the next migration slower. Continue to focus on the employees and continue with the open communication.

Pros

All the people I worked with were nice, and supportive. My salary & bonus structure was competitive and easy to understand.

Cons

The overall process for bringing in and turning-up a new customer needs a lot of work. Lots of redundant, non-value add processes & procedures done in systems that look like they were installed in the '90s. The company has a mountain of debt; and expensive debt (~$25MM/qtr in interest payments). You could see the company was starting to squeeze anywhere it could - capping mileage, mileage reimbursement rate below what the IRS allows, no longer reimbursing for cell phones, etc.

Advice to Senior Management

Bring in, or train-up some Lean Six Sigma consultants. Eventually, the poor systems are going to create a stampede of customers out the door.

Pros

It's a job. Pays better than working at McDonalds or Wal-Mart.

Cons

Every project seems to be a knee jerk reaction. PAETEC buys another company every 6 - 8 months, taking on more work, but doesn't give pay raises. Management expectations are ridiculous. They will overload one employee, and then mark them down on their performance reviews for not completing their assigned work. Receive little to no recognition for personal sacrifices made to accommodate PAETEC and their wants and needs. Over all low moral in the work force, and your told that you should be happy to have a job.

Advice to Senior Management

Hire the right amount of people to complete the work assigned. Stop building spreadsheets and start listening to your workers. Directors are detached from work force and understanding of their needs, get back into the trenches and your hands dirty.

Pros

A once proud company in the south (USLEC) is remotely apparent but fading fast. Most of the leadership of USLEC is working for competitors (one, in particular) and Paetec has its work cut out to make it better. They have a chance if they follow the leadership examples in the Northeast, which has been wildly succesful for years. The onboarding at Paetec is very good.

Cons

Mostly in the south - what the heck is going on??? The turnover is akin to the carnage the south suffered during the civil war. The burning of Altanta has nothing on what is going on in the sales offices in the south. If this is what the president of sales of the south meant when he prounounced, "year one was to get my team in place - year two is the year we take that team and perform over 100% to quota (FYI - quotas were reduced dramatically. The spin to the public will be that 2011 was an improvement over 2010 as it relates to quota, when in fact, sales will actually be down). Southern leadership points fingers at the reps, complains that the sales managers can't inspire or keep reps when they are actually the problem. Constant badgering of the teams is not the way to get more sales. Also, if the shareholders had any understanding of how inept and stale the sales training program is they would storm the gates themselves and terminate this worthless, money wasting entity. Meanwhile, they just wasted a ton of money on Miller Heiman, or as I like to call it, common sense probing, to improve their approach. If they just let good reps and sales managers be themselves Miller Heiman wouldn't be needed. By the way - Miller Heiman is great for enterprise accounts that spend significant money with their carrier - also known as, business Paetec will never get. And worse yet, you'll never get business without leadership and sales reps in the local branch offices which are very empty and getting emptier each month. If the plan is to have 1 rep in each office in the south you are doing a great job of executing your plan.

Advice to Senior Management

Arunas, Aruna, Arunas. When will you realize that you are the emperor with no clothes?? Your people, your "founders" are fooling you every step of the way. Look past your admirable loyality and get these overpaid, over-rated people in roles that are more becoming of their skill set (back to sales training, washing dishes....whatever - kinda' the same thing). Otherwise , the Peter Principle will drain the creative energy of those qualified to do the job the way you expect it to be done. In fact, if this keeps up, the Peter Principle will soon be renamed the "Paetec Principle".

Pros

benefits are fairly good - my direct manager is excellent -

Cons

Its a factory - with a time clock (log in/ log out on phones) no match on 401 - no salary increases for at least 3 years.. last year bonus were a "beauty contest" no criteria managers got together and picked - the training required doesn't related to my field directly - upper management lives in a different world - don't back-fill for positions that are open due to death of employees or leaving - expect same amount of work with less employees.. goals aren't clear to me - I'm glad I'm considering retirement soon

Advice to Senior Management

reestablish a set bonus program wo everyon knows what is rquired - match 401 - give long delayed salary increases -cost of living etc.

Pros

Some great people are working there. They allow you to take four hours a month paid time off to do charity work. In some departments there is flexibility with regards to workday hours and working from home.

Cons

Favoritism is rampant throughout the organization. Outside of the chosen few, survival is possible, but being successful is unlikely.

Senior management is driven by gossip and innuendo. They often make decisions without understanding (or even caring for) the consequences.

Employees are often micro managed and belittled.

Resources are frequently inadequate to get the job done properly. Sadly, worse still, when employees leave, there is a good chance the positions will not be back-filled.

The corporate culture invites finger pointing and lack of teamwork between departments and divisions. It is an us versus them mentality fomented by management.

Notable failures and substandard performance is often rewarded by lightened workload. Knowledgeable and successful employees often go overlooked and unappreciated.

Sales team continually receives praise from CEO while back office hears that they can be replaced.

Advice to Senior Management

Get over yourselves. PAETEC is NOT the most employee and customer oriented company. Get rid of the "founders" mentality it kills employee morale as does the continual threat of layoff/firing. You should really find out who the key people are and treat them with the respect and appreciation they deserve or risk losing them all and being left with the dead wood.

Pros

Software engineers are allowed to make technology decisions within the defined problem set. You have work from home privileges and flexible time. You get to work with leading technologies, and you also get a chance to learn the business. Software engineers are not just code monkeys; they are valuable members of the team who understand and help improve business processes.

Cons

Management seems to like keeping people in fear of their jobs. You always feel like you are looking over your shoulder. Quite honestly I think this comes from the CEO because it happens to people at the director level and all the way down to people with no direct reports.

This company has grown from 75 people to over 5000 since 1998, and the people who were there in the beginning are treated VERY differently than newer people. There are people who can basically do whatever they want and get away with it. It's very unfair at times.

No raises or bonuses since 2007. Recently the CEO told people that the bonuses were given but only to people who deserved them. The interesting this is that this was about 5% of the company. So apparently the other 95% weren't working hard enough? Again, culture of fear.

Advice to Senior Management

Start treating your people better. You may have good retention, but that doesn't mean your people are happy. Many of them are not and judging from your retention numbers in recent months, you probably know that.

Bring back the raises and bonuses. If you can't, don't blame it on the people who are working hard to make things better, because it's not their fault. Maybe look at leadership direction instead.