Pros
I have been working at Dish for over a year now. Before coming to Dish, I read quite a few negative reviews on glassdoor and other sites. Imagine my surprise that a year later, Dish turns out to be my best job ever in my short career of 15 years.
1. Great management team.
I am working in the largest development team in IT (Middleware). There are 40+ developers on site and another 40+ offshore in India. The organization is flat: there are 3 managers and 1 top manager for the group. I was so impressed with the managers here, I have decided to pursue a management career path myself. Here are some quotes from the managers.
- You can be as successful as you want to be at Dish.
- I want to have a life outside the office. If it is not absolutely necessary to stay late, I should be gone by 5:30pm/6pm.
- We work to live, we do not live to work.
- We trust people here, that is why we hired you. We do not micro-manage. We give you a task, we expect that it will be done. I won't ask you "are you done yet" everyday.
- (Background: after a major release with long hours). If you are not gone by 4pm, you are fired. Managers actually walk around the cubes and kick people out at 4pm, to make sure that the team recharges after working so hard.
2. Outsourcing done the right way.
Dish has a vast IT operation, with 500+ people on site, and another 500+ offshore in India. The on site people focus on meeting business requirements, collaborating with other DEV teams/business/infrastructure, designing software, and managing progress of offshore developers. Offshore developers are shielded from all the noise and can focus on getting development done.
The nice thing about having a large offshore team is that (1) you double your team at a reasonable cost (2) you double your time, because of 12-hour time difference. Outsourcing allows IT teams to have a much better chance of delivering quality software, on time.
Some companies do no outsourcing (like some of my previous employers) and will always be short handed, which translates into cutting corners to meet deadlines, producing sub-par software, which eventually may cause low employee morale. Other companies do close to 100% outsourcing (think IBM, lots of software shops, large companies), which means that communication between IT and business breaks down, and typically business ends up not getting what they want, and they get frustrated.
I think that the Dish model is an example of the right way of doing IT outsourcing.
3. Learn new technologies and grow in your career
Because Dish has such a large IT workforce, it is not afraid of taking on new technologies and rewriting the whole thing every few years. 3-4 years ago most of enterprise software was rewritten as part of BT, and things are working much better than before. Starting last year, there are major initiatives to re-architect the systems again to prepare for the future. There are lots of opportunities for IT folks to grow technically and professionally.
4. Founder led company.
Cahrlie Ergan built the company from scratch. He owns majority stake in the company. He is not like a typical CEO who is just a hired hand. This is his life. He is not going anywhere.
As founder, Charlie can change directions of the companies very quickly. He has acquired billions of dollars worth of wireless spectrum over last few years, which allows Dish to have a second play outside of pay TV, in the future. That is a primary reason that DirectTV got bought by AT&T, because it does not have a second play for the future.
If people work hard here, there are plenty of opportunities to move up and across departments. The company encourages people to find opportunities inside the company, rather than outside the company.
5. Winning IT team.
Dish does around 3 major releases a year. The IT team is a well-oiled machine that is executing very well. When I was interviewing with Dish about a year ago, I was told that Dish can do more work in one year than a typical Fortune 500 company can do in 3-4 years. I thought that was exaggerating. It was not. The efficiency and productivity here in IT are amazing. I have learned to trust and expect good work from colleagues in my team, infrastructure, offshore, ...etc.
At the end of the day, it is a good feeling to deliver good work products, as an individual and as a team.
Cons
1. Benefits could use some improvements.
