Vantaggi
Non-management staff is great--smart, hard-working, supportive, good people. Since leaving, I have maintained many friendships formed during working with MTA. Through those friendships, I've learned that nothing has improved at the company.
Svantaggi
With few exceptions, management doesn't trust the staff. The CEO surrounds himself with people who feed his ego rather than offer him good business advice; senior management has mostly followed suit, promoting people who say what they want to hear. The company has gone from being a monopoly into a competitive environment, and its business practices haven't kept up with the transition. Unfortunately senior staff believes that only they are capable of leadership and innovation. New ideas from non-management are seen as dissention and, though senior management mouths an open-door, open-communication attitude, in truth innovators are seen as disruptive and threatening. I've seen the company adopt ideas put forth by staff after the innovators quit and moved on, but rarely is a new proposal taken seriously or adopted, and even more rarely is the one who proposed the idea rewarded. Back-patting is saved for management. Turnover in some departments is very high. Innovation by senior management seems limited to moving offices around. Despite the fact that this communications company needs every department to function well, the only department given credit for success is customer service. The CEO is extremely paranoid of the one union (IBEW). The CEO does his best to hand-pick the board of directors, and persuaded them to adopt a method of board policy that separates the board from vital knowledge of the company. An employee taking information to a board member is grounds for dismissal. Despite all this, there's camaraderie among the workforce, and a determination to succeed despite management. The only reason this company still exists is that the worker-bees take genuine pride in their work. There's an attitude that the work they do makes a difference to their neighbors and friends; that working for a cooperative is important; that people's lives, especially in this harsh climate, can depend on the daily efforts of each person. You won't find better staff to work with, or worse management at the helm.