In my estimation, Verizon has been on a downward trajectory in terms of its attractiveness as an employer since approximately the time of our original involvement with Apple, which seemed to bring a number of restrictions, firewalls, and layers of bureaucracy to our business that simply weren't there before. I do not think this is directly the fault of Apple; I think that simply provided a great opportunity for some in leadership within our organization to move away from several core parts of our company culture that were enshrined in our Credo. "Bureaucracy is an enemy. We fight every day to stay 'small' and keep bureaucracy out. We are more agile than companies a fraction of our size, because we act fast and take risks every day." These ideas seem to bear very little resemblance to our current culture.
Verizon Wireless (the name itself, now, an anachronism of a previous era; simply Verizon is now the preferred nomenclature) has slipped into a habit of management to (and by) the lowest common denominator. While the model in the past was to hire and promote the best possible people, give them plenty of leeway, and allow the results of this situation to determine who was moved into positions of greater responsibility (and, conversely, who was demoted or 'promoted to customer'), the current model is to build a significantly more restrictive series of systems in all aspects of the business to limit what choices can be made, and then (as the impact of any particular manager or leader is lessened) to move to more of nepotistic and political system of hiring and promotion.
In the past, if a customer had a problem that they brought to us, the only thing between an employee at any level and a resolution was how determined they were to make it right; now, there are scores of issues that simply cannot be fixed, no matter what you do-- by design. There is been an exponentially increasing series of transactions types that have been restricted to special teams, requiring lengthy calls into various call centers, which have also been downsized recently. The idea appears to be that instead of providing a large number of tools to employees at all non-executive levels and then doling out the appropriate commendations or course corrections based on their usage of such tools, we should simply not allow our employees the ability to do much more than the bare minimum so that they cannot create any problems.
There are advantages to this approach; it (at least in theory) reduces the number of catastrophic errors by employees that could have a customer impact. In practice, people still find innovative ways to create problems (both intentionally, in the case of integrity issues, and unintentionally), and it is just vastly more difficult (and, increasingly, impossible) to fix them. I see this as one of the most critical failures of our recent direction in corporate culture.
More tangible than this, however, is the dramatic downturn in compensation. Verizon used to be a place that paid better than anybody in the wireless telecommunications industry, and was simply a well-paying job, period. Over the past few years, however, they have consistently modified the pay structure to incrementally decrease the pay, reduced the number and size of bonuses (some of the more tenured folks probably remember Short Term Incentives and Long Term Incentives [STI & LTI], both of which were phased out for those below C-Level executives with the promise that they would just be migrated into our base pay-- a promise which has been demonstrated since implementation to be false), and in general shown a distinct trend towards avoiding paying its people appropriately. In the Retail channel, people are fleeing in droves; turnover is now multiples higher for the average store than it was for a store I know well that was the worst in the entire region in turnover 6-8 years ago. Sales reps are taking on second jobs to try to make ends meet, or simply leaving the company altogether. People in management roles are trying to step back into front line positions to even have a chance to make more money. This is not happenstance; it is the obvious result of a direct, intentional move towards reducing compensation.
This is not limited to the Retail channel, either. The B2B channel has also seen a reduction in their pay, and have been threatened by the rise of business sales out of the retail channel. This has caused the conflicts between the Retail and B2B channels (which have been consistent and vitriolic throughout my entire time with the company) to become more frequent and even worse. B2B has also been affected by the problem of the movement towards politically expedient promotions and the subsequent fallout of less effective teams, a problem which has become pandemic in Retail.
Beyond that, there are a number of other areas where Verizon has started behaving like a stereotypically too-big-to-function-effectively corporation. Example: Verizon recently launched a VOIP solution called One Talk for businesses to replace landline phone systems. One Talk has a ton of potential, and will at some point be a fantastic option for businesses; but executives, fearful of lower activation totals for 2016, pushed for it to be launched almost a year before it was ready. (This is not hypothesizing; this was confirmed by executives during internal conferences). The result has been predictable: rampant system issues, constant product failures, inability to resolve issues in a timely way (or often at all), and a corporate culture that bullheadedly believes that all these issues will be overcome if we simply push that much harder on the front lines to sell it. A baker would not put a half-cooked cake out for display and sale, as he knows it would reflect poorly on his business and hurt him in the long run. Our failure to recognize the same is indicative of our slide into corporate groupthink and mediocrity.
There are myriad other examples as well (systems 'enhancements' that grind business to a standstill because they are so riddled with bugs and flaws that they are unusable; the cycle of eliminating positions within the company only to re-establish the same position a year or two later when they realize its importance, only to once again implement the same poor organizational and personnel policies that caused the team to be eliminated in the first place, leading to its elimination again a year or two later; etc), but one that I find to be particularly egregious is the move from an effective meritocracy to a more politically-driven organization. Ten years ago, you could look in the ranks of leadership and find scores of people who had started as temps or frontline employees and worked their way up by being the best at every position on their way up the ladder. Now, you have numerous examples of people with little or no experience in a given channel or position being put in leadership due to their political connections, and, predictably, suffering for their inexperience.
Increasingly, there seem to be examples of this being driven by pre-reorganizational tribalism from the old regions. For example, in the South Area, the old Carolinas/Tennessee region was historically the powerhouse, often producing multiples better performance across every major metric than their competitors in other regions. In a company driven by competition, this lead to the members of Carolinas/Tennessee being vocally prideful of their performance and snatching up considerably more Area and company-wide commendations than their peers. As a result, after the reorganization, there is a blatant (and pointedly retributive) bias against old Carolinas/Tennessee leaders moving further up the ladder, even when their results are almost exponentially better than their competitors for a given position. As a predictable result of putting less accomplished people in positions of higher authority, the results (and corporate culture) have struggled as a result. This is precisely the sort of organizational idiocy that leadership analysts have been railing against for years, and that Verizon had previously done such a great job of avoiding. Now it is simply one more indication of our failure to keep the most important elements of our corporate culture as we have grown.
So in summary, in the past few years, we have managed to remove tools that allow employees to do their jobs effectively, and replaced them with limited/ineffective/unstable tools when they have replaced them at all; moved from a system of promoting the best people into the biggest positions to one where the most politically expedient candidate wins out (and suffered the resultant failures of leadership that are the inevitable result); made the few avenues we have for doing our jobs significantly more difficult and time-consuming to utilize; transitioned to a culture that values mindless regurgitation of corporate catchphrases over actual results; and paid our employees less to deal with it all.
This sounds terrible, and it indeed is certainly not good; but this is not to say that everything in the company is an abject failure. After years of being infamous for its atrocious work/life balance, Verizon has legitimately become more sensitive to the time needs of employees, and done a better job of removing the cultural taboos on vacation, maternity/paternity leave, attempting to adhere to a 40-hour work week, and establishing some semblance of firewall between time at work and time away. I realize this might be listed under the 'Pros' section above, but for two items: first, the work/life balance still is not good, it is simply much better than it used to be. And second, I have provided a lot of information above that casts a poor light on Verizon, and rightfully so; but I do want to end on a somewhat less negative note, as I do not want people to think that Verizon is some monstrously horrific organization-- it is not. It is simply, in my opinion, a once-great company that has lost its way in the course of its growth.
