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Alcatel-Lucent

Acquired by Nokia

Is this your company?

Good company - Senior Software Development Engineer Alcatel-Lucent Employee Review

4.0
Dec 15, 2016
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

- big company, with lots of departments, type of jobs, technologies, etc. You can change the job internally like you change to a total different company. - in general a kind of relaxed atmosphere in general, but this depends. A nice, quite place I would say. - own projects, big projects - so if you learn your domain you can be comfortable for years. - flexy time even work from home accepted (it's between you and your manager) - some departments - really nice technologies - (but few cases) - A Union is available !!! SITT - Sindicatul IT Timisoara - which really have success in fighting against firing or closing down some departments, etc - since Nokia bought it I have seen a new culture of Wellness promoted inside the company which I was really pleased.

Cons

- projects are complex in general - and sometimes too complex I would say. So it can be painful sometime: you have to know a lot of things and figure out what is wrong instead of just simply develop software - problems in management: due to "we want big margins" politics a lot of constantly transformation of the company. Alcatel became Alcatel-Lucent, then Nokia bought it. A lot of transformations. Big managers comes and go each one with a super plan to restructure the company, so some jobs can be lost. (But internal mobility is available) - not nice technologies in most of departments (for my taste - which is java oriented) - not anymore powerful local management to fight for growing local center. Feel like Bangalore internal site is more important now for high management instead of East Europe and nobody can fight against this anymore. - seems like trend is too go from R&D to Services (not ok for ambitious developers I would say) - sometimes there are colleagues you cannot learn much from them (if you want to grow). But this depends, again.

Explore other reviews about Alcatel-Lucent

5.0
Jan 12, 2022
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

ALU afforded me many opportunities and the pay was great.

Cons

I can't think of any

2.0
Jun 11, 2008
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

The workers at Alcatel-Lucent, at least the former Lucent employees since I worked almost exclusively with these folks, were among some of the smartest and most conscientous I ever worked with. The people who tried really cared and carried the company.

Cons

Alcatel brought with it a lot of the classic characteristics of bad French management. ("Why make it simple when we can make it complex?") Lucent has all the characteristics of a former 100-year old monolpoly. Its management is full of managers who never had to be efficient or organized (since it was based on a "cost plus" revenue system while Ma Bell ran the US phone system). In fact, the more people it hired and the more it spent on useless ideas, the more money it made! It has horrible compensation systems for its management and salesforce (paying for sales, not for profits). The company is very badly organized and while some departments are working 60+ hour weeks, others are fairly useless and make it hard for the productive groups to get real, very needed work done. They promote rah-rah cheerleaders into management who have no clue how to manage except to support the people who suck up to them. There is no well-integrated strategy for the company, and this leads to scattershot efforts at doing anything to have a good quarter, even if it means robbing next quarter's sales and profits.

2
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