Good company with too few FTE opportunities
Pros
CEO's done exceptionally well with rebuilding T-Mobile's brand. While T-Mobile is now eking out a small profit, his efforts are expected (by many) to result in the company being acquired by another larger profitable company, e.g. Comcast. Stock option grants to all employees, when the company first went public, were generous. Stock is now trading at its highest point ever resulting in significant return for those who received the initial grants. As an industry disruptor, it is (was, for me) an exciting time to work at the 'UnCarrier' who is grabbing the lion's share of new subscribers -- many of whom are switching from Verizon and AT&T. Annual bonuses, tied to the company's performance, the past two years have been especially generous.
Cons
IT workload is incredibly high and constantly shifting in its priorities. While the CEO's vision and strategy are sound, execs across the company (who are creating work for IT) are not aligned. There is zero capacity planning conducted for IT resources which results in many teams having too much work, too little time, and too few resources to complete their work on schedule with high-quality results. IT FTE growth opportunities (promotions and lateral moves) are sorely lacking. Within the past 5 years, especially after the AT&T acquisition failed, the IT org evolved from one leveraging a few number of contractors to one employing a major number of contractors. In early 2016, within IT, the FTE/Contractor ratio was 1/7. The Org's current ratio goal is 1/4 yet there remain far too few FTE openings. IT promotions are typically limited to outsiders and insiders who are talkative extroverts who may or may not be successful with solutions delivery. Yes, as within most companies, it is not what you know -- it's who you know. Merit increases are stingy, e.g. 2% annually unless you are a star (1%'er) performer. Formal performance reviews were eliminated a couple of years ago yet IT employees are still, twice annually, stack-ranked (although, fortunately, the bottom performers are not terminated). Initially, the elimination of numerical ratings for employee performance seemed to be a positive change. While, now, employees may have formal goals documented, their performance ratings (during Q1 bonus season and during Q2/Q3 merit season) are now far more subjective than during the days when formal performance reviews were conducted with ratings granted to individual goals. Diversity is sorely lacking. IT org is comprised of mostly H1-B visa holders the majority of whom are East Indian males.
