Flex Employee Reviews about "upper management"

Pros

The ideas, from a conceptual standpoint, are very interesting. There's a lot of market segments (such as the connected car, IoT) that Flex is trying to go after and software plays a critical role in it. Coming into the Innovation Labs at Flex means working on projects that won't be productized for years. A lot of the higher-ups are really savvy people and are trying to shift the organization from the manufacturing mindset and into the product design and development mindset which is really good to see. The office space has the accoutrements of a typical tech company (open office, lots of snacks, fully stocked kitchen, etc). The people are all quite friendly and the only expectation is to get your work done on time, not how much time you spend in the office.

Cons

I came to build IoT products for clients and what I got out of it was a bunch of poorly thought-out ideas from management that the software team would have to implement for demonstration purposes. The software team spent a majority of their time piecing together pre-existing demo's and open source projects for management to demo to clients and other upper management. We never tackled any difficult problems or were even aiming to build features for a certain user or use case! A major problem with this company is that software has yet to become a really important area to invest in. The hires they make aren't that great and the projects they've been handing out to the development team can hardly be considered software engineering. However this may have been just an issue with my group. The project management team was abysmal. It was filed with people who literally had no idea what they were doing and acted unprofessionally on occasion. I had one project manager fall asleep in the middle of a meeting when someone was asking him a question!

Pros

Most of the employees enjoy a good work life balance.

Cons

Poor pay packages at lower grade Upper Middle Management is not helpful and useful to the employee Top management is tough to approach towards improvements and career enhancements (A few and not all).

Pros

Plenty of hours and overtime. Work is actually pretty easy.

Cons

Oppertunities for advancement are rare. Upper management can be quite disorginized and that can show in project scheduling

Pros

Benefit is decent and working hours is flexible.

Cons

Not really organized. Upper management doesn't really communicate well with clients and has no business skills to run the whole projects. If you want to get some experience, it is ok place. However, not more than that. Flextronics is a manufacture company but trying to be innovative and trying to be a leader in the tech market.. However, at the end it is a manufacture company.

Pros

Good job if you are in desperate need of a paycheck and have no other options in life and have hit rock bottom.

Cons

*Upper management doesn't care about their associates. *High turnover; as a result of management not caring about their associates people keep leaving the company and as a result locations are often understaffed and associates have to work harder/longer hours. *Upper management tends to be unprofessional and makes up rules as they go despite company policy. *HR doesn't maintain confidentiality and if you contact HR regarding an issue with an employee, they will go behind your back and tell them..which results in a hostile work environment. *Many managers are not qualified to be a manager, but attained the position due to the 'slim pickens' of candidates. *Favoritism; if you are not kissing your managers behind you will not get ahead in this company. Many employees/managers seek mistakes in others in order to progress with the company and make themselves look good instead of coaching and motivating others to become a better frontline associate. *Contract work; here today, gone tomorrow. You never know.

Pros

Negotiate a good salary up front because you will never get any more. There are good, smart people there at the working level.

Cons

Upper management down to mid management have no idea how to move thru a project and get anything done. They will not listen to those on the ground in the trenches. Executives overseas are clueless as to how to run the business in the States. NO work life balance at all. You work, that's your life. Holidays, sickness, doesn't matter. The only time you will get off without having an argument is if a close relative dies! Seriously.

Pros

Love the people that I worked with day to day. Lots of community involvement projects where employees are encouraged to participate

Cons

Workload too heavy and as staff is downsized workload increases Upper Management more invested in 'the good ole boys club' than in selecting the best person for the job Constantly in a downsizing mode and sending jobs offshore where it is cheaper

Pros

The pay is not bad and there is a lot to do, which should translate to a lot of experience and potential opportunities down the road, in theory.

Cons

You want stress? They got stress. You want work life balance? I wish you luck. TL;DR Flex has a terrible culture and work environment. In Memphis they do 3rd party logistics (3PL). That means doing contract work for Flex to provide services for big name brands at rock bottom prices. Upper management underbids contracts to win them and then overworks everyone to try to fulfill them. 10-20% of the people do about 80-90% of the work. Middle management's main job is to make excuses to customers and upper management for why Flex can't deliver at the level they agreed to in the first place. SPOILER: It's because upper management agreed to deliver Ferrari results on a Fiat budget, but saying that out loud is just a different way of saying 'I wish to resign my position effective immediately.' So no one does. Everyone is in it for the money and everyone in middle and upper management is exclusively in it for themselves. The half-life for management is 6 months to a year. Flex will never change this business model and that is why these contracts and the Memphis site are doomed to failure or perpetual struggle. Flex closed all of their other service sites across the country. Memphis is the last one, and it is always hanging on by a thread. There is one main account keeping that site alive, and that account has been on life support for like 20 years. They are almost always talking about pulling the plug. If you know, you know. Flex and its customers have no problem working anyone to death if you let them. Their pandemic response is proof of that. They made people they could have easily let continue to work from home come back in way too soon and a lot of people got COVID-19 that did not have to as a direct result of that. As usual, Flex lied about it and claimed no one got COVID-19 inside the building, but of course they would say that. The State of Tennessee passed liability protections designed to protect businesses from COVID-19 lawsuits in the Summer of 2020 right after Flex Memphis made everyone come back on site. They do not care if you die because they can't even be sued if their negligence gets you killed by COVID-19 thanks to Tennessee's crooked government. Outside of IT, it is not a good idea to try to stay there long term. Doing so could literally destroy your life. IT does pretty well, but the overall environment is not the best in part because everyone hates their job since it is impossible to meet the demands with any consistency, and in part because their senior leadership is hired and retained based entirely on their willingness and ability to ignore reality, smile, and lie through their teeth about anything and everything.

Pros

Fair compensation, benifits and good library of training material available to all staff

Cons

Distrust between upper management escpecially between different departments causing slow growth in terms of making improvements