Good place to watch your career die - Senior Manager Avaya Employee Review

1.0
Feb 16, 2016
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

Flexible working arrangements are available for some employees. Discretionary Time Off (DTO, sometimes referred to as "Unlimited Vacation") can be great for some employees (depends on management).

Cons

Benefits: No raises (including cost of living adjustments). Junk bonuses (unless if you're the CEO, or a member of the C-Suite). Health insurance costs increasing, while benefits decrease. 401k match is a joke (for Fiscal 2015, Avaya employees who contributed >=5% of their pay throughout the year will receive a match of 0.625% of their salary). That isn't a typo, your match will be just a tad more than six tenths of one percent. Make $100k per year, and contribute $10,000 to your 401k? You'll get a handsome $625 employer contribution to your 401k. When I started with the company, I was told my target bonus was 17% of my base salary. Pretty solid I thought! Then the company had a pretty good year (all things considered in 2015) and I received a good performance review. So I figured for sure I would get a nice bonus close to my target percentage. Not so. My bonus for the second half of FY2015 should have been 8.5% (17%/2), but ended up being 1.6%. No explanation was provided, except that I should be happy with getting a fraction of my bonus - I guess in the past they used to give employees sub-$100 bonuses. I asked them "Why not lure new hires with a 30% target bonus or a 50% target bonus if the company has no intentions of ever paying close to target bonus", to which of course they had no response. There are no opportunities for advancement. You're stuck wherever you got in the door. Don't expect a raise, a significant bonus, or the ability to advance through the ranks. I know someone who was promoted to a higher position, and they refused to pay her the "Minimum Salary" for that position, because they said the increase would have been too high as a percentage of her income. So much for "minimum salary". When you add all these things together, you find that you are worse off every year you work for the company. If you hire in at say $100,000/year, and five years later you're still making $100,000/year, but with higher benefit costs and lower coverages, you're falling behind (considering inflation). There is literally no motivation to work hard - if you work hard, your pay will be the same, your bonus will be the same, and your chances for advancement/not getting laid off will be the same. For all of these reasons, you'll find many employees to be "zombie" employees. They don't really care. They're just collecting a paycheck. Outside of benefits, you'll find incompetent managers (including executives) who just ramble different sayings and talking points without offering anything of substance. My management team mostly ignores me, which is good in ways/bad in others. They'll ask me to complete tasks/reports, to only never read them (I have confirmed with them that they haven't read them). Sometimes it feels as if you're polishing brass on the titanic as it's sinking.

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5.0
Jan 9, 2026
Anonymous employee
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

Great people, highly skilled co-workers, flexible remote environment

Cons

Several layoffs during the last years

1.0
May 14, 2026
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

The company used to care about customers, but they removed all the sales people who actually visited and consulted with customers to save travel cost.

Cons

The company's newest CEO, Patrick, only cares about getting back to a Cybersecurity company as fast as possible. Can't sell the company fast enough, but buyers can't get past due diligence periods.

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