Qwest Reviews in Seattle, WA Area

Pros

You START with 4 weeks vacation and there is no stigma against using it. Qwest really supports a healthy work/life balance. They are extremely loyal employers and do not give up on you when your performance is weak. Lots of people get in and stay til they retire. It feels like a family.

Cons

Red tape, beauracracy, administration. It's a 100+ year old phone company what do you expect. It can be very hard to advance. Since people tend to die in their jobs I've only seen one person promoted from my position in 4 years. Recently they have really, really cut back on support staff for sales so I spend all my time writing and following up on my own orders and doing repairs anything BUT selling.

Advice to Senior Management

Give sales reps in the key space more support!! I am so busy in non-revenue producing administrative work I can't sell. I want to shoot myself. I found a $5K MRC opportunity in May, it's July and I just finally got time to do the proposal.

Pros

Decent pay and benefits. Technology changes can make the job interesting at times, but overall the job is repititious and mundane.

Cons

Lack of advencement opportunities. Poor middle and upper management.

Pros

The position I had as a Account Consultant was exciting and challanging. I liked the income scale.

Cons

There was a definate "Millionares Club" prevalant"

Advice to Senior Management

n/a

Pros

It is a great place to work for women. You can have a family and work. They have a great relaxed culture and are strong forces within the community and strongly believe in community service and giving back to the less fortunate. Qwest has great opportunities for fellowship and is a strong advocate for diversity.

Cons

There is not much room to move up within the company. They higher outsiders to bridge gaps. Also, Qwest is going through a merger and might not be a stable place to work until the merger is complete.

Advice to Senior Management

Management should be more hands on with their employees and give them room for advancement.

Pros

Pretty good bennifits. Qwest has good pay for the industry. Union enviornment so its nice when you have senority. Relaxed dress code. Loved the people I worked with for 7 years before lay-off.

Cons

Lots of old systems and changes with new system upgrades happen often and dont always make the final cut. Lots of upper management issues and lots of fights between union and management. Didnt feel like the customer was getting the best deal!

Advice to Senior Management

Change is good but needs to be thought our better before done. Closing tons of customer service centers all the time really affects employee moral!

Pros

The benefit plan that includes medical, dental, vision and 401K.
This is a large company with opportunities to cross into other departments and pick up new skills.

Cons

The management team is very clicky, either you’re in or you’re out. This environment results in poor promotion choices; people are put into position not based on their qualifications but rather on how close they are with senior management.

Advice to Senior Management

Take a close look at your management team and work to build a culture of respect among and within the work groups.

Pros

I love the service-oriented culture at Qwest, which stems from its heritage from the early days when it was a part of the old Bell System. Employees for the most part tend to be good-quality people with a great work ethic. Salary and benefits are competitive, and hard work is rewarded. Culture is not workaholic; my work weeks have rarely exceeded 40-50 hours.

Cons

With the advent of very strong competition from the cable companies, Qwest has been thinning its ranks for the past 10-15 years. Even in good economic times, Qwest has been laying off good people. Dark clouds of future layoffs are perpetually over the heads of employees, which is not an encouraging environment to be a part of day in and day out.

Advice to Senior Management

Make sure you have a full understanding of the workings of your organization before you decide who to cut. This especially applies to new executives.

Pros

Some of the positive things that I saw while selling for Qwest was first off all, great brand recognition. Coming from a CLEC that did ZERO advertising, I never got I never heard of you before. Qwest also has a pretty good product set, and when you sell POTS lines you call the A Team to place the order, no contract needed or signature, and could install in as little as 2 days.

Cons

Incopetence from Mid Level Managers. I met many managers and trainers believe it or not who NEVER sold. They simply been there for 10 years in another department.. Too many systems to access for different needs and many of them are anequated( from the early 80's. My biggest complaint was the transparency between what you have sold and what I got paid on. My commision statement never said what accounts or products I sold for that matter, Just a number. That was rediculious

Advice to Senior Management

Do not try to give professional career telecom salespeople advice on selling if you yourself have never done it. Be transparent with your team on whats going on

Pros

I interviewed for my job at Qwest (at that time US West) while finishing up my bachelor's degree, and have been working for them ever since. I have held other IT-type jobs while in college, including internships at large companies, and I could not be happier with where I am currently. The coding is not in the latest and greatest languages, and we are not cutting-edge in terms of IT, but the team I am on and my immediate management could not be better. I feel appreciated and enjoy the coding that I do!

Cons

The one drawback is that we are not cutting-edge development languages... there are many old systems here that need to be maintained, but it is still challenging.

Advice to Senior Management

Keep listening to the lower-level folks, we are close to the clients and have good input as to what the clients need and are asking for. Thanks!

Pros

Impacted by some recent downsizing within Qwest I find myself in the job market. After several months of looking, interviewing and researching salaries & benefits I can tell you Qwest was a great place to work!

Cons

The company has recently cut approx. 10% of thier workforce and frozen management pensions and salaries so the jobs are hard to come by.

Advice to Senior Management

With the increasing loss of land lines and consumers migration to wireless telecommunication services the company needs to continue to expand into these areas to remain competitive.