Software engineer - Recensione dipendente - Software Engineer presso Netcracker Technology

good team, good management, interesting projects

sometimes too many business trips

Some historical context to start with. NetCracker was built by some of the brightest graduates of its time. It used to be an extremely successful scale-up because of a combination of two factors: 1. The right moment and place: a wealthy and fast-growing telco industry needed a fresh start in their systems to roll out the infrastructure the world is using today. 2. A business model based on consultancy-style principles: hire talented graduates and unsettled perfectionists, pay them pennies, work them to death, and make a reasonable margin because of that. It worked really well. And then they lost it all due to classic leadership failures and star syndrome. Key reasons to choose NetCracker: You will meet some of the most brilliant people here and make friends for life. You will learn how to make impossible things possible, and you will learn rigorous delivery frameworks executed at a level very few companies and people in the world can match. You will also learn team-based brainstorming of subtle and bold political maneuvering. And many other advanced skills you will probably never need anywhere else. This company truly values outcomes and those who can deliver. Their survival depends on execution, so high achievers have always been valued and quickly promoted. However...

Number one bad thing you need to know (beyond working unreasonable hours for decades and learning non-transferable skills): There is a caste system. If you are 'delivery', you will never be admitted into the higher caste of western office decision makers, nor will you ever be equally paid. They will work you to death, promote you into even more impossible missions, but will never consider you at the same level, despite you owning the entire delivery process (revenue generation!) and managing teams of hundreds of people. NC operate in a highly chaotic and politically heavy environments of impossible transformation programs. They frequently commit to delivering programs that cannot be delivered, so they burn their high achievers to exhaustion and then praise a caste of politically savvy, non-tech 'managers' whose main role is not delivery but navigating the heavy corporate games of dinosaur-like or inertias telcos without any measurable outcomes. NC charge clients for software implementation, they pay you like you are doing some leisure product development, but in reality, company and tech teams at the forefront are driving painful full-scale transformations for which western-world consultants would charge $ thousands per hour. Ever heard of leadership skills? Forget about it. The entire leadership vertical has none, and no intention to develop any. (On the senior management level think of micromanagement, lack of EQ, team dysfunctions, lack of transparency, favoritism and all other toxic traits of poor leadership). Heard of things like QBRs, strategy planning, OKRs, etc.? Non-existent. Real program management or portfolio management? Non-existent. The entire workforce outside of Boston is treated like a body shop. No transparency of the company strategy. It’s both: there is no comprehensive strategy planning in place and a 'none of your business' attitude. The so-called department managers also have zero general management skills. No understanding of how to direct, plan, or execute strategy. And 90% of them don’t possess even basic people-management skills.