Comcast

Free cable, base price internet (discounted at higher tiers), and discounts on Comcast Mobile, alarm systems, and Netflix.

My first four years here were really great. I didn't have any complaints beyond some small, nitpicky items.

Then, in February of 2023, things changed in my department due to budget cuts. (Comcast, like most tech companies in the post-COVID era, overhired during COVID and then realized they had to downsize now that no one was sitting at home watching TV anymore during lockdown and was back in the office.) When they lay off people, they expect the remaining people to take over their job descriptions on top of the jobs they already have. A lot of the time (at least in my department – VOIP QA) it was pushing people into PM-type roles when they are engineers and not interested in that. If you talk to management and try to change that, they will not listen to you, as it is cheaper to have your employees do PM jobs than hire a contractor for that. A lot of people aren't happy about this and are looking for other jobs.

They were also trying to close down our lab office and bring all the lab equipment over to a nearby office five minutes away, as there were budget cuts. Then they realized that there are at least 75 servers in use there, and to move everything and set it up, and rewire it, is going to cost over a million dollars. So their solution? Leave the servers in place, and some people using them will have to go back and forth. There were also some modems that weren't able to be moved, so it was the same thing. They moved all those modems down into the labs, so if you want to test with them, there is no desk to do it anymore. You have to use a ladder to get up on a shelf and hook up phones to the modems and try to hear yourself over the cooling fans in the server lab. (The plan was to rent out the office space of the top two floors of the building to other companies – hence moving things to the first-floor labs.) It is getting more ridiculous...

Management thinks that it is always right and refuses to course-correct, as you can see. There are employee surveys, but they don't actually listen to your complaints. They used to have meetings to go over every single complaint on the survey, but now they just pick one out at random if they really don't agree with it and defend themselves. Complaining on the surveys that they don't listen doesn't work either.

They are also hiring too many contractors for the monthly sanity testing of established projects. There aren't a lot of employees anymore. There are also a lot of offshore contractors, as that is cheaper for them. The problem is, they are only available until 12 PM due to the time difference, and half the time they're offline by 11! Not to mention, they don't do great work, and you have to ask them multiple times to do something. There are exceptions, of course, and there are nice employees and contractors, but you can count them on one hand.

Also, as layoffs were coming, with no changes to job performance, you can get a bad review out of nowhere (when your previous review said you were a pleasure to work with) and a threat that if you don't improve, you're going to be put on a PIP. This is to justify layoffs that came two months later so you can't sue them.

Upper management and the higher-level technical employees all drink the Kool-Aid, act like they are gods, and think that it is the best company ever. Contractors and lower-level employees, when there are budget cuts coming, are treated like they are not worth anything. At the end of this, you feel like a number and not an employee. Good riddance; it's better to find a job that values you, your skills, and your dignity.

Oh, and the budget cuts got so bad that employees who retire didn't get a paid retirement lunch; we had to split paying for it amongst ourselves. And the holiday party? Potluck in the conference room. The year before, it was a golf driving range and a catered dinner there... Yeah...

Oh, and if you want to get promoted, it doesn't matter how good you are; it's about who you know. So if you refuse to be buddy-buddy with upper-level talent or management, you're not moving up.

The first four years there were great, but the last nine months put a really bad taste in my mouth. It felt like betrayal and backstabbing. It made me forget the good years that came before that. It's a shame... Don't work here; the corporate culture is not worth your peace of mind.

We are human, not a number. When upper management tells you to treat us badly, or come up with an excuse to give us a bad review so you can justify layoffs 2 months later, don't do it. Hire managers who have experience, not people who get promoted laterally so the company can save money. Actually listen and act on what we say in the employee reviews!