The company is still quite large and, as a result, still very siloed. Some teams play well with others, but some teams (and especially some individuals) practice safeguarding their processes or knowledge, which is very frustrating. Often, there is lack of coordination between teams and a lack of a shared sense of purpose or achieving results. Most folks will do their work in the same prescribed manner they've been using for the last 20 years and won't lift a finger to do anything more.
There is a huge lack of willingness to change in this company. This is magnified by the past few years of going through Chapter 11 bankruptcy and laying off (or giving an incentive package to leave) most of the younger employees. Most of the employees are nearing retirement age and have no incentive to create new processes or solutions.
Management refuses to invest in new tools or technology, or mandate change from the top down. As a result, there are long-standing issues with old processes that are extremely outdated, very clunky, and very slow to launch new products or deliver quality results for our customers. Most processes are still waterfall based and agile is a term that's thrown around as though it's an exciting theoretical concept, but it's still never implemented because the old, non-agile processes (and employee mentalities) are so deeply embedded.
Most of the company's efforts seem to be around cost-cutting at the moment, which means reducing head count wherever possible. This drives short-term operational margin gains, but does not bode well for future growth. I've heard it's almost impossible for new hires to be approved at the moment, but this is hearsay.
The company seems consistently to be trying to catch up to the market rather than actually innovate and lead. We seem always to be at least 5 years behind the technology curve, but our large customer base (who won't upgrade) seems to be just as far behind the times so they remain on track as usual, but our competitors beat us to the market every time.
Management (and especially the CEO) have no clear direction for the company, priorities shift constantly without warning, and there is little to no company culture to align with. There have been recent efforts to launch the "New Avaya", which has been just as successful as New Coke in that we got weird new marketing designs (purely cosmetic) without any underlying changes to how we operate as a company.
Management has recently shifted dramatically from focusing on SW only products back to focusing on hardware as recent financial pressure (getting out of bankruptcy and going public yet again) has forced them to focus on short-term revenue generators. Unfortunately this means that more relevant solutions such as subscription and usage-based products get the back seat as they are much longer revenue plays that don't contribute to Wall Street projections in the near-term.
As a result of all these items, there is often a highly disjointed feel to your work and your efforts with management demanding projects be completed quickly without proper resources or without anyone properly thinking through the offer from end-to-end. This results in rushed products that go out the door with large quality issues and with major functionality outages due to lack of planning and communication between teams to deliver a unified solution.
Finally, the financial future of the company remains uncertain. With short-term financial pressure to make certain margins, hiring and investing in tools and people seems to be out of the question. We have repeatedly shifted from private to public and rumors swirl about leveraged buyouts or selling off chunks of the company. Either way, this company does not have the resources to remain competitive and all the financial interests seem likely to continue these trends of either increasing bad debt or continued loss of revenue-producing segments of the company.
