Pros
- fit to non-demanding guys, good for students as first job in IT, then hurry up and leave AT&T Brno. - tiny annual uplift of the income (from 1.5 to 4% per year). - some nice benefits e.g. pension and leisure plan.
Cons
- low entrance income. - permanent salary troubles due to incorrect calculation, HR screw up every single salary, especially if you work on the shifts, be really prepared. Then you have wait another month to get that back. - no business trips - AT&T Brno is ultra low cost center. Travelling was before, last years totally cancelled for everyone. If somebody said that visited colleagues in the other country, just because it was years ago or that person is manager, pure technicans have NO chance to touch customer sites, meet colleagues from US/UK and so on... - this is related to above mentioned - small or no carrer growth. Just migration from team to team, that is also not an easy, because of reputation, if anybody does not like you - a pity, even CCIE won't help you. - huge open space as work place with many noisy people, sitting there is mostly as punishment, be prepared on the end of office hours for strong headache. 1 open space for 1 floor = hundreds of people, environment looks more as call center than place fo network technicians. - very bad work attitude most of the employees - means that they work from here up to there and that's it. Work consists of internal engagements through AT&T ticketing system (AOTS), every team has small portion of the network to manage, don't think you touch most up to date technologies! Most of Cisco devices are end of life with uptime more than 6 years... Some devices remember 90's - typically 3COM chassis, IBM servers, old copper cabling with lagacy switches, ISDN, dial technologies - still in use in USA, enjoy troubleshooting that :) - you will work with PROPRIETARY SYSTEMS which means AT&T predefined environment = you will NEVER USE IT AGAIN IN THE OTHER COMPANY. Even Linux/Unix systems have built-in functions created by AT&T Labs. - every aspect of your work will be controlled by processes and procedures, no brain involvement is needed most of the time. - work environment mostly occupied by Eastern Europe employees. You want to meet up Americans/ Germans, englishmen ?! No way, mostly you can hear just english with romanian, bulgarian, ukrainian accent. Even native Czech guys try to avoid working here. Americans meet up maybe on the avatar of your colleague's IM (Q link) from USA which takes 3 - 5 times more than your salary for same work !!! In addition careerism with nasty taste of selfish management focused to keep badged as low as possible, some employee left ? No problem, save the money, don't hire new one instead. Manager will get bonus for saved cost and you will get more work for same money. This causes very bad non-balanced environment, everyone is just pointing out on the other one who received salary uplift and how much. - Home office is prohibited due to EU donations per head and donations for the corporate premises (in sense of tax free periods and so on...) This is even more funny if some teams have to be in the office always (if you are sick go to doctor and stay home), the other ones break the rules and work from home permanently. Sometimes even among the guys in the same team - some have manager's privileges to work from home, the rest not. - local management is horrific, non educated overconfident individuals with no technical backround in most of the cases, best examples most of the managers of Bluesky project (especially compliance team, also Teleconference team, SGI team, any level 2 Bluesky teams - no words could express what is going on there!), remote management is even worse - they don't care - for most of them you are just an "asian" working almost for free (for them of course), beautiful example legacy services. - no motivation to do anything beyond your responsibility. - no professionalism, employees are dressed during local Office hours as sportmen or rapers, eating lunch on the desk in the Open Space which smells everywhere. - average time which employee stays in AT&T Brno is from 12 to 24 months so your colleagues will change over and over until you won't care and don't remember names (generally around 1 000Employees in Brno center, monthly 30 - 50 come and leave based on HR stats). - missing team to team cooperation, no orchestration of their work, just internal engagements over the tickets are basically the role of the ball which has to be kicked out immediatelly. - GOOD MESSAGE ON THE END, IF YOU READ UP TO HERE MEANS THAT YOU ARE REALLY INTERESTED IN WORK FOR AT&T BRNO AND THIS ALSO MEANS THAT YUOU SHOULD BE CALM, BECAUSE IN CASE THAT YOU WOULD SCREW UP ANYTHING YOU WON'T BE FIRED. BASICALLY I KNOW ABOUT 1 PERSON WHICH WAS FIRED during 8 years, BUT CANDIDATES FOR THAT WERE DOZENS - THEY WERE MOSTLY PROMOTED OR RECEIVED PRIZE "EMPLOYEE OF THE MONTH" OR "SERVICE HERO" (NO KIDDING - PURE FACT). BTW, enjoy those words during the interview which explain you how important job you do and will do always :) Mostly technical and so on...if they want to catch you, they sing the nice song :) ENJOY :)
