Understand this review is on VES. Verizon is run like 2 separate companies, wireless and old telecom (VES).
Pros
We got health benefits and 401k benefits and education benefits that were dreamt about by the common man. Benefits were so good the union employees complained they couldn't give their education benefits to extended family members. Really? Depending on your manager, some gave employees lots of flexibility in working remotely. I was customer facing on VES security products and services, and Verizon did a great job of putting in modern sales tools for us to use, including Hoovers, Discovery.org, and a very well designed salesforce.com instance. A lot of people complained about the quoting tools, but I thought they were pretty decent. VES's security group has two excellent security products well regarded in the industry that I believed in - penetration testing and breach response services. Verizon also has the best security intelligence on the planet - maybe AT&T is just as good (I know everyone in security says this, but Verizon really does) I.T. support was very excellent internally, Verizon's onsite gym was super-nice and run by a great staff. Onsite cafeteria was nice as well. No complaints on the work-life balance for sure. Pay was very good for living in the southeast.
Cons
Verizon is really two separate companies. Looking from the outside in, the wireless side is run efficiently and more modern (the Wireless floors in our buildings were updated and nice whereas the VES offices were cubes and desks from the 90s) If your manager allows you to work from home, this really doesn't matter. The old-school telecom piece I was part of (VES) was plagued by a "good old boy" mentality in management and also by process-heavy disparate back-end IT systems from all the telecom acquisitions (the IT people at Verizon were stellar to make it all work as well as it did). Management was mostly people who were waiting to retire and trying to make their numbers look good just to hold on to their jobs. When I started there was about 5 layers of management between me and the top, when I left there was 7 - most of them didn't seem to do much except generate reports from salesforce. If you weren't part of the "good old boys" club, there was little room for career advancement until people just left the company. (and a lot were leaving). I tried to make a move within the security division twice, properly using the internal process as well as making phone calls and emails to the hiring manager(s). The managers wouldn't even bother to return my phone calls or emails to simply talk about the opening, or they would blow me off after accepting a meeting request. Instead they would hire telecom buddies they had worked with in the past who had zero security experience. This, among other things, was the most discouraging and prompted me to start looking for a job outside of the company. Finally, when people leave, Verizon (VES) doesn't even bother with exit interviews.
