BT Reviews

Former Employee – worked at BT full-time for more than 10 years

Pros – Used to be a great place to work for colleagues, innovation, opportunities, benefits, etc, etc

Cons – Previous CEO, Ben Verwaayen , brought in ignorant Stalinist (yes Stalinist) style bullies. They use performance management to undermine, demoralise and ultimately destroy people, even the recently recruited and talented - beware! The idea seems to be to get rid of every existing employee, however competent, and replace them with fewer less experienced ones.

Advice to Senior Management – To survive BT needs to sack the bullies and most of HR, get back to proper decent common sense management of people and commercially to get away from accountant/cash focused management and back to innovation and investment in what must, or at least should be, the most exciting market.

No, I would not recommend this company to a friend – I'm not optimistic about the outlook for this company

Former Employee – worked at BT full-time for more than 10 years

Pros – Good pay and benefits and reasonably secure employment

Cons – Bureaucratic, slow to respond to market environment, to much emphasis on internal politics and "busy work"!

Advice to Senior Management – Look after those at the bottom and in the middle not just those at the top!

Yes, I would recommend this company to a friend

Current Employee – been working at BT full-time for more than 7 years

Pros – Diverse company with many different kinds of projects and customers.

Cons – Lack of A grade people that make a winning team, continually failing against modern, more nimble competitors due to bad ideas and poor execution.

Advice to Senior Management – Bring new blood in and give them the authority to do things differently, accepting that you need to think and act like a technology company to compete and win in the modern world.

No, I would not recommend this company to a friend

Former Employee – worked at BT full-time for more than 7 years

Pros – V large company so potential to change roles

Cons – Slow, political, bureaucratic, demoralised workforce

Advice to Senior Management – Cut the dead wood quickly rather than pay them to sit on the bench

Former Employee – worked at BT as an intern for less than a year

Pros – Good starting salaries for MBAs
Great working hours
Location (London rocks)

Cons – Company is a bit slow-moving: carries some vices from its state-owned days
Declining industry

Yes, I would recommend this company to a friend

Current Employee – been working at BT full-time for more than 10 years

Pros – Wide range of opportunities and colleagues. Generally collaborative working styles across most organisational boundaries. Fairly easy for good people to take control of their own career objectives. The days of automatic promotion on seniority are long dead.

Cons – Sluggish corporate bureaucracy. Weak management in some areas: exhibits tendency to treat people as interchangeable line resource on a spreadsheet. Line management in some areas is merely administrative. Target-driven senior management creates more long-term cost in its drive to reduce short-term spend. Lack of vision or strategy at senior levels.

Advice to Senior Management – Put yourself about a bit. Stop using the hierarchy to avoid addressing complex issues. Stop treating people as a problem to be solved. Delete from your vocabulary the following phrases: "quick win" and "low-hanging fruit".

Yes, I would recommend this company to a friend – I'm optimistic about the outlook for this company

Current Employee – been working at BT full-time for more than 8 years

Pros – Some nice people, not much stress and not a lot to do! Great if you like doing PowerPoint instead of delivering anything! Particularely good if you are in the old Pension Scheme.

Cons – Big, sleepy and boring. Nothoing new or exciting has happened for years. New products, such as BT Vision, are poor quality, late and going no where

Advice to Senior Management – Stop focussing on costs, milking the old cash cows till they die and try to look to the future. Maybe even invest!

No, I would not recommend this company to a friend – I'm not optimistic about the outlook for this company

Former Employee – worked at BT

Pros – I struggle to think of many, it was full of people riding off hiding at home not working and taking a huge salary. a complete lack of innovation and far too many middle managers. An easy ride for all employees

Cons – full of people riding off hiding at home not working and taking a huge salary. a complete lack of innovation and far too many middle managers. An easy ride for all employees

Advice to Senior Management – Out with the old, in with the new.... still sat on old public sector values, starves innovation and failures to deliver product or service right first time

Yes, I would recommend this company to a friend

Former Employee – worked at BT

Pros – Provides excellent training and opportunities

Cons – huge, easy to get lost

Advice to Senior Management – nurture talent

Yes, I would recommend this company to a friend

Former Employee – worked at BT

Pros – Work location flexibility, genuine hard working staff company benefit scheme, well known company

Cons – Disingenuous senior management, management bonussed on cutting heads, poor development opportunities, lack of senior management empathy with staff, constant reorganisation to support staff cuts

No, I would not recommend this company to a friend