Pros
- Colleagues are great! Some of the nicest most genuine people I have met. All very hardworking, and have their heads screwed on - Office is brand new - Opportunities to travel from time to time - I can't speak for all managers, but my personal manager was a legend. He comes off as a tad intimidating initially. However he's also one of the most intelligent and caring managers I could have asked for. - Company is growing fast, as are the salaries - The company holds events and socials every few months - Depending on your role, there can be a lot of variety to your day - keeps you on your toes - You will learn a lot - most of it company specific however are a lot of products/custom services hence resulting in an astronomical amount to understand and take in - The Director of the company comes across as a reasonable man. I've had a couple of situations where I've just had a quick chat with him and he's put things straight. - If you are a specific kind of graduate it can be a decent company to start your graduate career
Cons
- The hours are long. Be prepared to give up your social life on weekdays and the odd weekend too. This is stressed at your interview and they aren't joking. The telecoms industry is a demanding place. The deadline for everything is yesterday. You will be stressed and you will struggle to 'switch off'. - There is an unfortunate 'blame' culture. It's a shame because it creates a rift and disheartens a lot of employees. They look for someone to blame for a fault as opposed to having faith in that persons ability and looking for the reason why they did, what they did. - Project management needs a change in culture - There is a superiority complex I believe that needs to be addressed. They need to understand their role is to manage the project/client. Not the engineers. This needs to be done by the engineering managers. - Promotions and career progression are not transparent enough. Employees should be given a clearer path with set goals. E.g. Engineer A wants to move into Development Engineering. In this case he/she should be set formal quantifiable targets. This would mean that they have something to strive for! At the moment it's all decided by higher powers behind closed doors. - Colleagues are great, most of them are very intelligent. However we need to hire more technical people. Maths degrees/Physics degrees show that a person is logical and has the ability to learn, but it seems rather pointless. If we hired more graduates who have more related experience. Peoples progression would be much faster in my opinion, and less mistakes would occur. - The project lifecycle needs to be more transparent. Engineers(application and platform) both need to be aware of what is going on at the start of a project with a formal brief. Often I've been in a situation where I've been given a task, performed it and had it not fit in with the rest of the scope of the project. We need to get into the habit of following a formal SDLC, utilizing agile techniques - something we're not doing at all.