Verizon

1. Plethora of upskilling opportunities and the ability to differentiate quickly.
2. Self-motivated culture, adaptive work/life balance.
3. Many internal openings, trainings, and benefits; a great place to begin a career.
4. The business centers around deploying at a nationwide scale, which provides great project management experience for entry-to-senior level transitions.
5. Polarizing dividends yield a culture that is great for stability, family planning, etc. R&D is present, though extremely coordinated and top-heavy.
6. Career progression is highly dependent on your management. You will have the best experience if your aim is administrative, financial, or project management. The majority of technical professionals queue after years 4-7. High-potential prospective managers are often trialed internally or granted IC promotions while performing managerial responsibilities. This opens doors if management is your aspiration and a life accommodation arises.
7. While there are structural problems, the majority of management wants you to be successful and fulfilled. Approaching leaders with this frame will lead you to be heard, even if action isn't always taken where it should be.
8. Great employee phone program with add-in perks for partnered subscription services.
9. Best-in-class at build, which is valuable professional experience. Every department in the company is optimized to support this revenue model.

1. The IC ladder is a constant work-in-progress due to over-titling created by the merger of many corporate acquisitions over the years.

2. Legacy Bell roles remain but are gated behind stack-rank rules designed in 1980 for long tenure employment, which drops morale, causes career stagnation, and creates consistent talent churn as senior ICs "wait their turn" in a sponsorship queue.

3. Multiple management roles exist within every band, generally 1-2 IC roles above band 7. Frequent in-band role changes do not translate across the industry.

4. Due to headcount and excessive ladder rungs, titles are highly organizationally dependent. The criterion for the same role is largely dependent on your skip-level and will change frequently as restructuring occurs.

5. There are minimal employee safeguards in performance reviews. If a restructuring creates a management battle above your head, your contributions can quickly disappear within the politics. It's essential to keep your own record and create opportunities on your timescale, not the company's.

6. Business transformation initiatives create a legacy of "dead end" roles which either lack executive sponsorship or were never consolidated post delivery. Orgs survive beyond their tenure on mythical "phase 2". These roles can be launchpads into headquarters roles (planning, PMO, finance, etc.) but decay beyond a 1-2 year tenure.

7. "Standards" teams can form from initiatives which have exhausted funding or sponsorship, generally creating office politics and early/mid-career traps. Avoid these roles if you value meritocracy or your sanity.

8. "Quiet Trimming". Senior management tends to use the org chart to sunset initiatives versus collapsing these groups. This is evident in the flow of resources but never directly acknowledged due to optics.

9. Due to sheer enterprise scale, you will be vortexed into turf wars you didn't start. You will need sponsors across business units to lean on in these moments; leverage is the best defense.

10. The opportunity to build deep technical skills is increasingly rare, and the internal growth plan often pits deeply technical and managerial employees against one another for the same positions. Bias exists towards management due to the operational business model.

I remain appreciative of the many growth opportunities and lessons, and the intention of this section is solutions-oriented.

1. Verizon provides a smooth growth plan for managers at the expense of engineers. Fine if this is the intended culture, but the available opportunities are rarely transparent.

2. Scale unlocks capital‑B “Big” projects, but it also scatters accountability across too many ladder rungs. This tension must be proactively managed within any telco.

3. Do not penalize ICs for problematic, disillusioned, or retiring managers. If someone’s career is scaling down, their employees should be provided resources for lateral transition or sign a written acknowledgement to remain in the org. The water cooler is not sufficient.

4. Attrition occurs due to the skeletal remains of 3G/4G dual career ladders which persist in the 5G, but funnel one direction. Morale and recognition complaints are symptoms of professionals who join technology company marketing and ultimately manage annual budget cycles instead of pursuing their passions and potential Verizon IP.

5. I challenge you to deeply examine, define, and broadcast the intention of your senior IC roles. Across wider industry, role requirements are public domain and progress on merit-based artifacts (IP, patents, standards contributions, source contributions). Verizon's are highly subjective.

6. Verizon is one of few "technology" companies executing a generalist strategy within specialist roles, and is building a reputation for over-titling employees that are re-leveled at their next opportunity (VZ Fellow → NVIDIA Principal).

7. Performance goals should be generated by an employee's manager and approved by their skip level to avoid "bottom-up" politics. Drama is inevitable, but it's crucial to minimize the damage to individual careers and not penalize an employee for their manager. An employee seeking career growth and individualized performance feedback is going to become disillusioned if it is blocked by battles above their head.

8. Stack ranking is a management reality but needs far more governance.

9. Automate these notifications with written justification directly to the employee. Forget feelings, stick to facts. Do not rely on a manager to pass the message verbally, as front line managers frequently fight for their own people and rarely transparently pass directives they disagree with, which is unfair to the impacted employee.

10. Escalation paths should exist where organizational design creates stack ranking rather than performance. Nothing is more valuable than high output, cross-functional collaboration, and preserving high performing teams is a strategic imperative.

If two peers are compared for the same promotion slot, they should be notified in advance, and executives should work with the non-selected high performer to re-assign them into an org with an aligning opportunity. When someone feels their peer became their superior in an equal merit, headcount-limited scenario, they find new opportunities and leave. Nobody wants to damage their relationship with a peer they respect or care for over promotion politics. Failing to be proactive in these scenarios hurts both sides, as well as the efficacy of the promoted leader and business unit.