Pros
- benefits and compensation are better than most startups, but worse than larger companies - work-life balance is good - some of the best engineers I've worked with in the Bay Area - an interesting technology stack - engineers are generally friendly, easygoing, helpful, knowledgable, and have a lot more potential than they display - good place to join if you like to: a. fail and say "it's nobody's fault" b. suck up
Kontras
General for Verizon: - only 12 days PTO, accrued over the first 10 months of the year - 9 days of paid vacation - very few career opportunities. Verizon is an East Coast company and all strategic directives will be coming from there - few professional training and development opportunities General for the team: - this place only rewards complacency and compliancy - engineering and operational decisions are made by a handful of people without any meaningful feedback from the rest of the teams or the team members. Be mindful, however, that a better half of decision making people have no relevant engineering or operational experience though try to position themselves like they do - management style by the most part consists of the following (pick and choose one or more): a. micromanagement b. incompetence b. complacency/indifference c. backstabbing d. closed door policies e. no relevant communication to employees, or "worker bees" as they see it f. no feedback on performance g. varying degrees of ignorance - management relies on a few (say 3-4) "unicorns" who they think pull the whole engineering organization, therefore: a. get used to the fact and feeling of being completely ignored in terms of your input, suggestions, contributions, or performance because you'll still be grouped with "the rest" b. forget about individual and professional development opportunities since only a few selected people get to go to any training courses even if you show a significant interest in the training or the training is relevant to your immediate job responsibilities - organization is run by the people from two camps, if you don't belong to either of them you'll be on the sidelines regardless of your contribution or potential. This, in turn, leads to only people from either of those two camps being rewarded or promoted. - middle management often changes direction and scope of work just to show the amount of work performed, not the actual value or importance of it because five completed items no matter how you look at it looks better than one in their opinion - middle management pretends to be "the executives" and even go as far as calling themselves that - project management exist only on paper - very engineering heavy organization, though balanced inappropriately because some teams have excess capacity, while others are running super lean. This creates unneeded stress on the organization as a whole and individual teams. - management does not seem to understand the concepts of "code quality", nor do they believe in real testing of any kind. Velocity is the only determining factor for any project