Telcordia Reviews

Pros

Training is available if you can make the time, interesting work, intelligent and kind coworkers, within individual projects there is great communication and idea sharing

Cons

All work must be externally funded, so most innovation is hamstrung, communication between different areas of the company is practically non-existent, keeping your job is just a game of corporate musical chairs - everyone who has a job there at this point only does so because he or she happened to not be in the wrong place at the wrong time, revolving door of upper management

Advice to Senior Management

Greenquist seems to be more interested in the future of the company than several of his predecessors. Excellent that they brought Wanke back. Internally funded projects should be able to have more lead time than a few fiscal quarters - Rome wasn't built in a day.

Pros

I got to work on many projects. Thus, I got exposure to different aspects of networks and the telco world. Colleagues were friendly and sharp.

Cons

There was office politics (not necessarily worse than at other places, though) that meant that you didn't always have the best people working on each project, etc. Sometimes, it seemed that we lacked direction.

Pros

Great people to work with, interesting assignments and the ability to move to new projects and assignments and a generally supportive work environment with decent, but not great benefits.

Cons

Senior management was constantly changing and the direction of the company was changing along with the slump in tradition telecom and the always uncertain future and constant staff downsizing.

Advice to Senior Management

None.

Pros

High diversity within the company and lots of really smart people. The company has (in the past) developed some of the most innovative solutions with highest quality.

Cons

After a decade of downsizing, the culture has turned very nasty. Keeping your job at any expense has become the norm. For many of those remaining, they are there because they pushed somebody else in front of the bus - not because they deserved it. Gossip is king as a means to collecting information to use against others as well as to fill the void of internal communications.

Advice to Senior Management

Get over yourselves. Dismantle the good old boys network.

Pros

Very good professional staff, good collegial working relationships within organizations.

Cons

Shrinking market and leadership that is unfamiliar with and uninterested in custors

Advice to Senior Management

Select senior managers with more customer orientation and experience.

Pros

I worked in several groups there (projects) and in most cases it had good working environment; people are friendly; very good work/life balance; in some groups can learn a lot; I enjoyed working there.

Cons

In most cases hard to be promoted withing the company; too many meetings;

Advice to Senior Management

Less talking and more doing.

Pros

Worked in Piscataway campus - one of the nicest bunch of people I have worked for. Lifers many. But they take in newcomers well.

Cons

Slow work. Lifers are not that motivated.

Advice to Senior Management

Keep the good ones.

Pros

Greatest collection of people in any telecom company (both in terms of intelligence, expertise and wide and deep knowledge about telecom) and in terms of ethics and integrity and overall niceness!

Cons

Lack of integration between software sector and consulting sector. Lack of strategic vision.

Advice to Senior Management

Make a decision to address specific markets or technologies and then pour in resources to get the job done. Cultivate technical leadership. One by one our technical leaders are evaporating away and getting replaced by temporary spreadsheet jockeys who end up staying as permanent managers and as a result our leadership ranks are becoming slowly Dilbertized with managers who don't know how to grow the business.

Pros

Smart, capable employees with a broad range of skills.
Good opportunities for continuous learning.

Cons

Poor business development and business capture capabilities (in research org)
Research organization is poorly integrated with commercial SW organization.

Advice to Senior Management

Need a strong R&D org to support commercial side of Telcordia instead of a R&D org that simply pursues the "opportunity du jour" available from gov't funding sources.

Pros

job pressure is not high. Research work can be interesting, even though projects tend to be the same over the years.

Cons

Research lab funding is mainly channeled from the outside. have to spend significant overhead to write proposals to secure funding through government or commercial projects.

Advice to Senior Management

The owners of the company are investment management companies are being greedy. At this economy climate. it is unrealistic to demand the profit target of the company to increase year after year.