Pros
Prestige for surviving longer than 3 months (average attrition rate for an employee or contractor at DISH).
Cons
Whether you are a contractor converted full-time, or a full-time employee from the beginning, the interview process is long, grueling, and doesn't accomplish anything. You're forced to take 3 intelligence tests, and re-interview as a contractor for the job you've already been performing exceptionally. Assuming your supervisor's supervisor has actually been kept up to speed on what you've been working on (which happens very rarely at DISH), you're then subjected to four layers of senior leadership who all have to sign off on whether or not to keep you after previously approving the business justification for bringing you aboard as a contractor in the first place. The 20% deadline that DISH claims they just hit on June 15th, 2022... It's a joke! It's taken them FIVE YEARS to turn up 20% of the nation with a barely functional wireless network that still is chock full of bugs. Despite hiring the best and brightest network engineers and software developers, DISH senior leadership constantly undermines and countermands any good decision making done by the people who know how to build a RAN. They didn't even enter the 5G Wireless game on a sound business proposal. Basically Charlie Ergen bought some of the wireless spectrum at auction years ago, sat on it, and was confronted by the FCC to "use it or lose it". Instead of admitting he couldn't use the portion of the microwave spectrum that he foolishly bought to horse trade, he made a snap decision to start a 5G network with no business plan. He then insults companies like Starlink that are so far ahead of the game, by the time DISH finishes its 5G Wireless Network, Cellular Wireless Networks will be completely obsolete, replaced with nano-satellite arrays and cheap municipal WiFi. Not a single financial analysis or opportunity cost decision is ever made at DISH when they decide to do something. They go off "sticker price" on every choice they make, and then wonder months later why their decisions always incur more technical debt, more overhead, and stifles their ability to scale. All one has to do is say "if X is the cost of being an MVNO per cell tower, and Y monthly retail subscription produces Z profit margin, then as long as our capital expenditures per cell tower are less than X, or we charge more than Y per retail customer, we will make more than Z profit margin!" Yet, DISH can't even accurately accrue its expenses or reasonably estimate capital expenditures. The people who get promoted at DISH are idiots, that, while they may pass the 3 intelligence tests required, cannot exercise basic critical thinking or reading comprehension skills. You will find yourself working on a solution for something that doesn't even solve the original problem the solution was for. "Automation" and "Scrum" are just buzzwords that Program Managers toss around as corporate speak without actually understanding what automation is good for, or why Scrum is NOT WATERFALL! I have literally argued Scrum (as a Certified Scrum Master) with the teams put in charge of coaching Agile at DISH, because I watch them constantly close out Jira tickets without actually performing the work the Jira tickets were for, and constantly asking for "clarification" after backlog refinement has been done several times. What did they do with all of their time leading up to this big 20% nationwide turn-up? I've literally watched senior leaders make TikTok videos and constantly nag people "where's your mask?!" Stop worrying about masks, and start worrying where your next paycheck is going to come from! DISH doesn't own ANYTHING of the network they're building, so guess what? That means there's no assets to liquidate in Chapter 11 Bankruptcy! That means the preferred shareholders are going to be the ones without a chair when the music stops.
