Verizon Reviews

Pros

very good hourly wage, sales incentives and benefits

Cons

bad working conditions - noisy, dirty, freezing
incompetent management
constantly changing management direction
inconsistently applied metrics
poor communication

Advice to Senior Management

Support those who produce sales and outstanding customer service. Stop treating your front line employees like cannon fodder. Recognize that money saved by outsourcing orders to low-paid foreign call centers is money lost when those orders have to be fixed or the customer becomes too frustrated trying to fix them and goes to the competition.

Pros

* The benefits - medical, dental, vision, short term incentive, 401k match, personal days off. Telecommuting may be an option.
* Interaction with colleagues from different continents.
* Possibility to change jobs without changing employer.
* Bright coworkers
* Exposure to different operating systems & software.

Cons

* Company size can make communication difficult.
* Danger of burnout. The teams are lightly staffed, the development cycles are frequent and aggressive, budgets are tight. As a result, you may find your self working weekends, holidays, and vacations.
* First level managers are not very effective (promoted into the position but not well trained for it). They do not follow company policy of coaching and encouraging professional development of those who report to them. Their is focus meeting scheduled milestones.

Advice to Senior Management

The philosophy behind the performance review process needs to be promoted and enforced from above. From my perspective, the process is failing from the directory level down. As a result, there is a loss of current and potential gains in human capital.

Per company propaganda, the performance review process promotes communication between managers and their reports. It includes goals for professional development (IT even has a minimum number of training hours required per year).

The process has become a demotivating bureaucratic formality. There is no real communication between manager and reports. Between reviews, the manager focuses on the schedule and rarely has any other reason to initiate communication.

Pros

-Huge Company
-Career Opportunities
-Competitive Salary
-Global presence in telecommunications market
-Flexible work hours
-Opportunity to move horizontally within the many business units of Verizon

Cons

- Huge company- hard to get your voice heard sometimes
- Ashburn, VA-hard commute from Maryland
- Currently downsizing
- Industry is rapidly changing

Pros

Could start at lower level programmer and work way up to lead or manager over time
Tremendous benefits, 401K matching, great medical and dental coverage (85% paid by company)
Industry standard paid time off

Cons

New employees starting with much less benefits package (post 2004)
Freeze of pension program as of 2006 (not for upper managers)
Employees in production support and other IT roles work many hours over 40 per week
No developing from within or career path help from management

Advice to Senior Management

Treat employees as valuable assets
Bring back more work life balance
Treat all lines of business as important (wireless, wireline)
Make VZ a company that great talent will be attracted to

Pros

Good place to work but depending of manager

Cons

Processes
Information technology is not flexible
Bureaucracy

Advice to Senior Management

N/A

Pros

working at Verizon was not as bad. There is lot of growth opportunity.

Cons

too much office politics going on.

Advice to Senior Management

respect young employees.

Pros

The $$$$. You get paid weekly and the salary is good.

Cons

Lack of flexibility lack of room to move out of your current position once you have completed T in T.

Advice to Senior Management

Listen to your employees maybe you would function better

Pros

Great pay; great people to work with. Lots of inter-team support on projects makes working day-to-day very productive. Working from home is allowed; more about delivery than "butts in seats." Supervision is minimal: you are expected to perform, and when you do, you are left to work like a professional.

Cons

This year, senior management ceased communicating with employees about organizational changes. We have not had a executive director meeting since February even though our organization is going through a complete overhaul. We had to interview for the new jobs that would essentially replace the existing ones. Not all were taken into the new org. The bad part is that those who were not selected have been told that their positions would be eliminated. When? Unknown. It could be "today, next week, or next month." There has been no expression of understanding from management about the anxiety these employees and their families are experiencing. The situation is the "elephant in the room."

Advice to Senior Management

Go find out what happened to your souls.

Pros

Good learning experience on the FiOS side from engineering, installation, and sales and marketing
Good salary
Good work environment, flexible schedule

Cons

Terrible commission structure
Being asked to do the work of several people
Upper management's lack of clear direction
Inflexible engineering process
Old school management style in a new more cmpetive environment, ie cable tv
Lack of upward mobility
Good old boy network

Advice to Senior Management

Lowell should do additional house cleaning at the top and promote more from within the existing management base in addition add management expertise from the cable industry outside of Verizon. He must also work to solve the labor issue without losing too much of the existing business.

Pros

Excellent opportunity to gain Fortune 20 work experience in a corporate enterprise

Cons

Executive leadership lacks tacit knowledge and experience to manage business effectively
HR lacks authority to objectively evaluate management talent and create career opportunities
Workforce forced into fear in expectations of six month employment, many moonlighting or searching outside

Advice to Senior Management

Empower your non-Executive employees to contribute by defining business growth objectives - with each Strategic Imperative- and provide the resources required to execute within attainable targets.

Stay committed to the business growth objectives and the underlying human capital for the long term.