Not a great career opportunity - Lead Systems Engineer Lumen Employee Review

1.0
Apr 21, 2020
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

Diverse environment - there's everything from high-end cloud to ancient Solaris and WS2003 boxes. If you ever wanted to learn the breadth of IT, this is a good place. Benefits - The Health Care and 401k are decent, the STI is generally reliable. Work/Life Balance - The PTO is pretty fair. I was almost never denied a day off.

Cons

Pay - New corporate philosophy is not to give employees raises or COLA. Employees had bonuses and raises taken, then were told they were going to readjust for raises quarterly (they lied, this never happened) then intentionally pushed every manager to flatten their stack to avoid raises. But hey, lots of EBITDA! The management stack on the CTL Business side is downright ghoulish with how disconnected they are from workers. Your frontline manager may or may not care, but it's almost certain that you will very rarely communicate with director, and never communicate with your VP, unless it's them talking to you in a Zoom Meeting. This company unequivocably does not care about their employees. They RIFfed hundreds of employees to India, and then had a tone-deaf Hawaiian Shirt Day. They have a tendency to do this - take all the bonuses, but then buy some cupcakes or somesuch. They've changed operational paradigms on employees repeatedly, moving Systems Engineers to DevOps without any sort of training or expectation, pushing employees into Project Management without any sort of understanding or training. These employees will generally get hammered by management for not performing a role they weren't hired or trained for. Corporate culture is a mess and nepotism and favoritism is rampant. Certain managers are notorious for padding their teams with incompetent employees who were somebody's sexual partner or buddies who rode motorcycles or other complete BS. Pushing back against this nonsense tends to get you branded a malcontent. They're also incredibly, stupidly greedy - promoting employees from lower teams at lower pay rates and refusing to readjust them to equivalency with the direct hires until those people leave. This culture has so broken the hiring process that many teams have had to hiring in overpaid contractors. The only teams that can fill are entry-level, so anybody entry-level with even a slight spark of talent gets poached up to the middle teams, even though they're unqualified, which drags down the middle teams and the entry-level equally.

avatar
Lumen Response
6y
Thank you for taking the time to write a review. We have made several organizational and philosophical changes through our integration with Level 3 and our business transformation journey. We work hard to create an inclusive work environment built on the foundation of strong leadership and are sorry to hear your experience with us was not in alignment with our standards and expectations.

Explore other reviews about Lumen

5.0
Apr 8, 2026
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

Fully remote, good pay and benefits, flexible schedule, great work life balance

Cons

Changing industry landscape, affected by lay offs

avatar
Lumen Response
2mo
Thank you for sharing your thoughts. Because of feedback like yours, we get better every day. We're sorry to read that you have had negative experiences with the changing industry landscape due to layoffs. These decisions are difficult and not something we take lightly. Lumen understands the impacts these events have on our employees and provides support and guidance through the challenging transitions. We're glad to hear that you valued our agile working model, compensation practices, benefits, and work-life balance. We are committed to ensuring that we can all succeed together. Thank you again for your feedback. We truly wish you the best of luck!
2.0
May 13, 2026
Anonymous employee
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

work life balance, excellent time off so long as manager doesn’t micromanage/track and limit FTO, nice people, leadership has turned the business around.

Cons

No pay raises even with great performance review (5years with zero raise) No career growth/progression - been on a high-performing team for 5 years and not one person on the team has been progressed or promoted during that time. Little opportunity for career advancement and growth New jobs within the company are going to external hires, not much grwoth for current employees

avatar
Lumen Response
3w
Thank you for your transparency about your experience. We want to hear from people like you to learn how we can do better. We are sorry to hear about your experience. Lumen is taking a proactive approach to pay equity and regularly conducts market reviews to ensure Lumen's pay is market competitive, positioning us at the forefront of compensation best practices. Your review will help us take any necessary action. We're glad you value work-life balance, our people, and leadership. Please reach out to us at CTLHRActionTeam@lumen.com if you would like to discuss anything further with your review. Thanks for being part of the team.
See reviews by: Helpful|Rating|Date|All