Pros
At this point, very few. Great insurance benefits, that's about it. I suppose if you're a great salesperson, you can make money. If you want to sell cellphones for the rest of your life, have at it. If you're good at sales...and very good...you can make good money at a big store.
Cons
The C-Suite is clearly full of people who have no connection to reality in any way. As far as I can tell, their long-term goal is to make every single employee of this company some sort of salesperson, and hope that they can push enough product out the door to make money. I haven't seen evidence to contradict this. The AOL & Yahoo acquisitions are all you really need to see in order to understand how much the leadership doesn't get it. They have no clue where this industry is going, they have no clue where tech is going, they don't understand the market, they don't understand the customer, and they have no vision of any kind as far as I can tell. The company is bleeding customers (and revenue) because having a slightly better network than AT&T in some places isn't cutting it anymore. In addition, many times over, it's been shown that people are willing to take a hit in the quality of their service in rural/some suburban areas if it drops their bill down by a measurable percentage. Sprint & T-Mobile are eating their lunch. With T-Mobile adding customers like crazy and having just purchased the largest block of spectrum in the history of FCC frequency auctions...all I can say is, watch out. Steve Jobs once said that the customer doesn't know what they want...you have to show it to them. Left unsaid (as it should be quite obvious) is that if you don't get it either, what you show the customer may be off-putting and they won't have any interest. That's basically what Verizon is trying to do. Whether it's this pathetic spinoff they're trying to create with AOL and Yahoo, their fairly useless Go90 app, the Hum (which no one wants), or their continued push to add tablets onto customer's accounts...all they're in the business of doing is trying to push mediocre products. When sales reps have to do backhanded and disingenuous things just to hit the sales targets...you know you have a serious problem. There is a culture of fear and uncertainty from the top down. Everyone is afraid to speak out in case their superior makes their lives more difficult. Everyone at the retail level sees the problem...but they don't dare speak to it. If by chance someone does, it's washed away with corporate jargon and feel-good speak that'd designed as far as I can tell to infuriate you to the point where you give up trying to speak out any further. They've eliminated the operations positions in retail stores, which means that managers who have no clue how to use SAP are now having to manage the day-to-day tasks. I had always thought that despite the heavy-handed sales culture, VZW was at least operationally together. This was incorrect - the rollout for SAP within the company has been a tragedy of miscommunication, lack of training, and utter ineptitude among people paid far more than I was who were supposed to know what was going on. When you have no confidence in people 3, 4 levels up from you...how can you have any confidence at all in the company, or even desire to show up to work every day? To add insult to injury...despite (what I had assumed were glowing) letters of recommendation from my store manager, my district manager, and my regional director...I didn't even receive a response to two internal positions I applied for (and was highly qualified for) after learning that my position was being eliminated. They have little to no loyalty, I witnessed the firing of others a level or two higher than myself for things they had no control over. I'm not writing all this to complain or even in hopes that someone at the company will notice. I'm writing this so that if one of you sees it, you seriously consider your long-term career prospects at this company. If things continue the way they are, the pain is only just starting. Until new leadership at the top is put in place...I don't see any other way for this to go. If you need a job that pays the bills, I get it. That's where I was at one point in time. But keep your options open. This is not a place you want to stay for the long term...not just because you might hate it, but because they may not have a place for you after a point.
