Pros
It's a pay check (although small by industry standards) so it beats unemployment. Low expectations so the underachiever can coast through. Stock purchase plan has higher cap than many places so you can make a bit of extra money by going "all in" and hitting the sell button when the shares hit your account (IMHO it's not a long term investment).
Cons
Low pay compared to technology companies. Extremely bad benefits (Example, I know people that go out on the street for insurance because they can get a better deal than the Echostar insurance). Very top down management structure - ideas that come from below, no matter how good, have no value with management - it's very much an attitude that "we're managers because we're smarter than you so your ideas don't have value". This is very much shown to employees as "we've been successful for 20 years doing things the way we have so there's no reason to change" - and if they wanted to change, why would the keep bringing back the same old upper managers that the company was founded with? As for the common employee - to management you're just an easily replaceable cog in the machine. Don't expect to be treated with respect. Management has no clue as to how to schedule and manage a large program. New programs are started after months of deliberation at the upper reaches of the company with a dictated due date. No one does a bottom up analysis to determine if the due date is even achievable. Instead they brow beat folks to put in extra hours to meet some arbitrary date on their task. But inevitably some other area couldn't even get close to meeting their deadlines because they are way understaffed and poorly managed. And the downside for missing a schedule by months? Well it's not the upper management who arbitrarily dictated the date that faces the heat. Upper management loves to micro-manage things far below their level while ignoring things that they should be doing. For instance, Mike Dugan has to approve all performance reviews. Last year they were delayed 3 months (including cost of living adjustments being delayed) while he tried to change the design of a remote control that the customer had already approved and which there were already thousands of built remotes in the warehouse. Mr Dugan, the customer is always right even when it's not what you want. A coworker that recently departed to greener pastures was asked where her company loyalty was. She replied that loyalty is something earned, not demanded, and what had Echostar done to earn loyalty from it's employees? Pretty much sums up the feeling in the trenches. As the economy turns, many people will be leaving to find greener pastures bc the company not only isn't doing anything to earn loyalty, it's in fact acting like it's doing a favor to give the employees a job.
