Highly Political - Opportunities Exist - Redundancy Risk
Pros
* Top tier player in the market with a global foot print and excellent marketing machine. * A lot of very knowledgeable co-workers, which is a joy. * Decent remuneration package (although not as good now as a few years ago). * Plenty of opportunity for international travel, including relocation for foreign missions. * The majority of staff are long term employees (10 years plus, so careers are possible). * If you manage to get in with senior management there is a lot of opportunity to develop a career. (double edged sword - see Cons) * The management team has been able to grow the company substantially over the past 10 years through successful mergers and acquisitions. Often M&A destroy rather than create value, but in the case of CommScope it would be fair to say there has been a value add for both investors and customers.
Cons
* As mentioned by many - management is a "goode ol' boys club". If you're in you're golden. If you don't manage to get I - or worse - if for whatever reason you fall out of favour, your career will dead-end and you will be fired at some point when one of the redundancy cycles comes along (as they do in this company every few years). -and this is irrespective of high performance and strong annual evaluations. * Strong and top performance, even recognized in annual reviews, is not what will further your career in this company. Mediocre performance - enough to meet targets, but not enough to threaten your manager's job - is rewarded. Over the years this has resulted in a soft management layer and a culture of politics rather than excellence. * Management say they are listening to staff - however they seldom take anything on board. * Often targets related to bonuses are handed down to individual contributors and even to junior and middle management, which cannot be influenced by them. These targets are important to senior managers (and their bonuses), but fail to motivate the teams as they cannot influence the outcome of targets set for them to achieve their own annual bonus. * The culture is highly political with many kingdoms built and protected, resulting in wasted resources (Investors take note). * There is group-think and little tolerance for new approaches or ideas. * Aging work-force and not enough new blood brought in poses an immediate and long term risk. * In-house innovation has stalled and now following an acquisition strategy instead.
