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A great engineering position if you find the right group inside a large organization

Engineer III
Former Employee
Worked at Comcast for 6 years
April 30, 2015
Denver, Colorado
4.0
RecommendsPositive OutlookApproves of CEO
Pros

Opportunity to work with modern tech. Great compensation, including stock options and employee purchase programs. Great work/life balance. Ownership of solutions is possible in some groups. Ability to influence tech used to deliver solutions. Separate managerial and technical career tracks.

Cons

Mid-level VPs have bought into outsourcing critical technical work, causing technical debt, mass exodus of quality engineers, and low overall morale in IT and Engineering organizations.

Overseas outsourced resources are a revolving door of talent. One month you'll have quality people, and the next month they are gone and replaced by new, ignorant replacements that need to be trained.

Not all groups are the same. Some groups have horrible managers or horrible peers; others are great.

Ability to move teams/groups within Comcast varies from manager to manager. Some are vindictive individuals, and others are supportive.

VPs rarely take responsibility for their actions. Directors, too, are slippery. Consequences for poorly executed or poorly contrived initiatives frequently fall onto the backs of engineers and low-level managers.

Advice to Management

Don't outsource critical technical work. Just don't do it. You will regret it.

Keep management accountable for decisions.

If you treat your engineers like cattle, they will leave. The good ones will leave first.

Invest in your talent, and they will pay you back. Treat them poorly, and they'll never forget, and you will pay a steeper price later.

Did I say you shouldn't outsource? Yeah, I'll say it again. Don't do it. The sales pitch you get from those overseas 'consultancy' organizations is full of lies. Quality will suffer. Output will plummet. The person who takes over your job after your failure will look like a hero when they bring the work back stateside.

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