Two months into being there I realized that it was a terrible place to be and I made a mistake.
1 - Top down leadership. For people coming from MSFT it tends to be frustrating because you don't get to own strategy or any much if any decision making. They tell you what to do and generally it all aligns to some uber promotion or offer they want to put into the market. The whole demand strategy is based upon offers and promotions and it leaves very little room for any long-term strategy. They have a hard time thinking long term.
2 - No strategy. The strategy is a race to the bottom (you can see that now Verizon is offering Unlimited for nearly the same cost and w/ TMO's inferior coverage/network, the value prop isn't there anymore.) I thought their "un-carrier" moves were disruptive, and they were, but now they are on like, "un-carrier 17" and no one cares anymore. People don't have attention spans for that.
3 - Generally speaking, the caliber of talent is significantly lower than what I was used to at MSFT. For that reason, I thought I would be able to be a big fish in a small pond. Rather, I ended up frustrated because they don't care what I have to say or the value I can add in areas where I was an expert.
4 - It's a highly sexist, boy's club culture. The CMO has 6 direct reports, none of them being female. I find that to be disappointing at best, and unacceptable at worst. With high representation of women in marketing I'm trying to understand how they couldn't find one woman SVP.
5 - Tenure at TMO is more important than experience. You have to be there for many years to move into leadership roles unless you get hired into one, in which case, you likely have an incompetent leader.
6 - Leaders there do not care about being strong leaders. The company doesn't invest or support team building; generally it's not a priority. I have a huge problem with this as it goes directly against my values. It's just not their thing. It goes like this -- John Legere and the execs make a decision based upon some gimmicky, emotional idea, not based in data/logic, then the whole company mobilizes around it, but the scope changes every day and it turns into firedrill after firedrill. To give you an example, they have meetings where Mike Sievert the COO, who also acts like the CMO but technically is not, reviews EVERY piece of creative for a campaign -- it's called a "Showback." Meaning, not just ABL, but BTL. It's ridiculous, wasteful and makes the culture unnecessarily stressful. It's "hurry up and wait" all the time. So there's a ton of throw away work. They work very inefficiently. So we have the COO reviewing the email campaign or nurture campaign creative and they have to sign off on what we do. Then we have unrealistic timeframes that goes back to the agency. You can't get to the strategic work because all hands are on deck with offers and promotions at all times.
7 - The benefits aren't great.
8 - The bonuses are great. But there's a price to pay with the above.
9 - It's really hard to get conference rooms, parking (employees have to park offsite if they get there too late because there's no enough spots for everyone), and IT is TERRIBLE. I mean, really, really bad, like when I first got there in Sept 2015, they were using Office Communicator 2007 still. Just getting a basic SharePoint set up for agency access took 3 months any more phone calls and emails to incompetent people that don't care.
