Frontier reviews

Be sure to research the infrastructure for the area you are applying for, If you are going to be managing technicians in an area with degenerated assets, you will be put on the PIP plan for having poor service metrics within 8 months. Metrics are based on TT and SO repeaters and TT and SO commitments, if you fall out of range with the company determined goals and values, you will find yourself on the performance improvment plan (PIP) and will be discharged after 90 days. The compnay is notorious for its network backhaul issues for years now and network capacity problems, These things are outside the control of a technical supervisor. I found that Frontier doesnt send out intra company emails when certain service areas are having red internet light or other unexplained outage issues, it will be on you to work and pray that the ERDS group would share and disclose this information with you. Technical Supervisor position is very difficult and your success is dependent on area upgrades of modern technology, their copper network is horrendous. If you think the video platform is ok, its worse when the problem presents itself. Once you have an issue with a video channel, it effects 100's to thousands of customers on a state wide level. Connecticut has atleast 15-20 MSI(major service interruptions) on a daily basis. With video platform products, theres no excuse for bad service, heads generally will roll. Most of the technicians are defintely not properly trained in various telecom disciplines, this will hurt you as well. The techs I had working under me generally had 15 years of experience or better and had no clue at all as how to handle and test basic fiber functions (it was an embarassment). This is not a reflection on the technicians, its Frontiers fault for not investing in better training, Frontier tends to use webinar based training thats trimmed up or abbreviated to save the company time and to get the techs into the field quickly while looking incompetent. Seriously they have terrible training programs in place for the technicians. This will hurt your service metrics numbers. Frontier will not provide any real management training or support to help you with your daily duties. You will be expected to be avialaibe 24x7x365 and will be abused by customer complianers on a daily basis (there are so many of them that will consume your productivity time). You will be expected to be a Frontier spin doctor as they have a difficult time not wanting to spend money on legitimate long term repairs and rather would band-aid a problem temporarily. The company is heavily involved with public events within the communitiies they operate out of, you will be expected to be available for these after hours during the weekdays and expected to work these events on the weekend for free, with no compensation for your time. Work and life balance is terrible and senior management will dump on you everytime and mix your priorities up constantly. Technical Supervisors are constantly micro-managed on a daily basis. I might also add that out of the several craft groups if you have I&R and PBX business techs, they are the only work groups currently (3-2016) still held accountable to SO/TT commitments and repeater metrics all the other groups are not held accountable which I found was unfair. My other experience with Frontier is that they stress on leadership abilities but appears they only want followers as they take the leadership values away as they micromanage your position and decision making process. Also with this position I found that 80% of your time is consumed with clerical and administrative duteis on top of what is already expected; they eliminated clerks and admins a long time ago. I also found it very difficult to get my technicians the proper DSL test set equipment for the services we were selling, most of them were using test sets that were last calibrated in 1995 and couldnt test bonded DSL service, their laptops are from 2001 also in which I determined they could only really set modems up with and could not conduct proper speed testing verification. Very frustrating with the overall network health of Forntier services as I found myself either not telling the truth to the paying customers, being there are soo many of them with network issues in which their services were effected on a daily basis for hours and months on end. Mostly everyday I would review techncians work loads and found that many of the work orders issued should have never been put out to the field. Just for the past few months in one particular DSLAM area, customer service reps were selling 24 mg DSL service when deep down inside unofficially it was well known that the site was barely able to deliver 3-6 meg speed max per customer. Guess what? Those are repeaters that count against your service metrics. Remember the techs you supervise are protected by their union, and you are protected by nothing. IMO, I always noticed how Forntier always cowered to the organized work force and allowed the protection and longevity to the underachievers who have been there for 10 years or better in the craft titles. If you are able to identify challenges and attempt to take appropriate action, you might be disappointed with the outcome. IMO I also found the company has a lack of any official processes or procedures that you may have learned elsewhere. So if some decisions were made based on past experiences, you will be discouraged from that behavior immediately.