NTL Careers

[spike7451]

Originally Posted by wsf86

NTL careers do not exist. Cr@p jobs maybe, but definitley not careers.

I'll vouch for that!!!Getting paid off next Tuesday!!

[Juan]

How do BT's pay and job security compare to similar roles in NTL ?

[Womble]

Originally Posted by wsf86

NTL careers do not exist. Cr@p jobs maybe, but definitley not careers.

I disagree, It totally depends where in NTL you are as to how well you get looked after. If you are in COBI forget it. Mr G and his pathetic side kick Mr S have run COBI into the ground and manage by fear and threats (The Gestapo would have been proud!!)
BUT, if you talk to other depts, in other busniess units, they are doing OKish. Business and Networks still go on training courses
__________________

Originally Posted by Juan

How do BT's pay and job security compare to similar roles in NTL ?

If your ex-ntl, much better, if you are ex-cwc, fairly comparable
BT are also going through the same upheavel. Business units being created and people being moved etc. But they are covered by a union (CWU), so join up peeps!!!!!

[wsf86]

Well it'll be no surprise womble when I tell you that I fall under COBI!!!
__________________

Just waiting for the wind to change direction....

[sheilablige]

Have to agree with most of the above.

From a "girlie" point of view the pay as a TSR was OK, but the men with families that I worked with were in a lot of cases struggling to meet the bills each month and in this area there aren't THAT many jobs about. A lot of people don't realise that you have to sit there taking up to 40 calls a day and (in a lot of instances) abuse from cmrs with little respite, working between 8am and midnight (8hrs obv) having no or very few 2 days off together and are even told when they can go to the loo. I went 4 weeks without seeing my husband due to shift patterns and had no social life (AAHHH!!!). There are few career choices these days and very little extra cash to be made due to the ridiculous targets. Many staff have also lost their "perks and discounts". Since IBM took charge the place has just got worse - we were even told that if we didn't like the changes there was the door: this from the bossman!
I could go on - you seem to have hit a nerve!! (and I didn't even bother reading the article!)

[sollp]

[QUOTE=Womble]I disagree, It totally depends where in NTL you are as to how well you get looked after. If you are in COBI forget it. Mr G and his pathetic side kick Mr S have run COBI into the ground and manage by fear and threats (The Gestapo would have been proud!!)
BUT, if you talk to other depts, in other busniess units, they are doing OKish. Business and Networks still go on training courses
__________________

Yes Can't agree more with you about those two. Unfortunately i'm in COBI and i've heard that maintenance department is frowned on slightly, like what do we have them for ect

As for the Union, yes we have been trying to get more of an interest in it. As for BECTU well where have they been over the years?

[9083]

Wait till the BIG 5 comes in... Mr G and Mr S will fall flat on there arses.

[GVet]

Originally Posted by spike7451

So do you talk out of your **** much? Compaired to industry standards,i'm UNDERPAID for the job i do.AND as far as careers within NTL go,My tech dept is getting paid off mid Sept as contractors are cheaper!!

Hey Spike, do you happen to be in IPD, oops I mean WIPD, oops I mean Visp . . . .

[Mr_Burns]

From what I can see you can only have a career in ntl if you work in Hook. Our department isn't even listed on the careers website! Still, no surprises there. We're a bit like Brigadoon - invisible apart from when redundancies come around once a year.

I think that the problem with many (if not all) of the departments within COBI is that they don't directly generate revenue - the people at the top can only see £ÃÆ ’‚£Ãà¢Ã¢â€šÂ¬Ã…¡Ãƒâ€šÃ‚£Ãƒââ‚ ¬Å¡Ãƒâ€šÃ‚£Ãƒâ€š £. I'll never forget one 'Head Of' we had whose philosophy was 'why do something to 100% if you can get it to 75% with reduced costs'

[Angua]

Originally Posted by Mr_Burns

<snipped>

I think that the problem with many (if not all) of the departments within COBI is that they don't directly generate revenue - the people at the top can only see £ÃÆ ’‚£Ãà¢Ã¢â€šÂ¬Ã…¡Ãƒâ€šÃ‚£Ãƒââ‚ ¬Å¡Ãƒâ€šÃ‚£Ãƒâ€š £. I'll never forget one 'Head Of' we had whose philosophy was 'why do something to 100% if you can get it to 75% with reduced costs'

I have every sympathy with you as although I and no one I know works for NTL the attitude is the same as a lot of companies.

Hubby is having to jump through hoops to get a job which is the same as he is doing at the moment because of "restructuring". Whilst at the same time seeing no change to the office staff numbers who neither produce sales or product. He also has to cope with the "nepotism factor"

[Escapee]

Originally Posted by Angua

I have every sympathy with you as although I and no one I know works for NTL the attitude is the same as a lot of companies.

Hubby is having to jump through hoop to get a job which is the same as he is doing at the moment because of "restructuring". Whilst at the same time seeing no change to the office staff numbers who neither produce sales or product. He also has to cope with the "nepotism factor"

The company I work for is heading in a similar direction, I started working for them and there were around 100 employees and they had started to make a healthy profit. The company started employing a lot of technical people in R&D, and projects started coming in, the problems started when a new MD arrived and the company floated in the stock market.

The situation is not looking as good, the targets are very aggressive and the projected targets seem way too high. The operations department has not grown anywhere near in comparison to others, on top of that we are unable to find suitable people to employ even though fairly good wages are on offer.

Whist we have too much work for the operations department, the growth is not in employees who "Do" but its in "Shiny ar*ed" ones at desks. This means the department is now employing more bums on seats to generate paperwork for the already stretched people who do the real work.

I am lucky, as I'm one of the people who has made the situation worse by moving out of the frontline into a strategic role. I would say my new role directly helps the aim of the company, ie: getting stuff out the door and being paid for it.

The new operations director (Lots of new titles and management numbers) decided we should move away from employing good experienced engineers, and employ monkees as technicians instead. We are even finding that good monkees are not easy to employ!

As the company grows, it seems to be exploding into the out of control situation that most large companies go into. I reckon the redundancies will start within 2 years.

[Ignition]

Originally Posted by shin0r

I know ntl don't pay the Contact Centre guys that much, but have you seen some of the cars in the carparks at some of the sites?

There are loads of lotuses and mercedes at Crawley Court - and at the Newport office I've counted Audi S3s, Honda S2000s and even a new BMW M3 (registration plate HAX?) - these people are technical admins iirc.

Hrm how many of the impressive cars at Crawley are owned by ntl employees and how many by Arquiva I wonder.

There are some semi-technical departments in Hook which are vastly overpaid and overtrained considering the rather dubious results they consistently turn out which have to be corrected by other less well paid departments to actually work. (Yes ntl you can send these guys on all the courses in the world and pay them stupid amounts, doesn't make them good at what they do!)

Since my job change I've been on more courses (in 2.5 weeks) than I was in a year with ntl, I'm paid more, respected more, work in a more pleasant environment where there's more to life than just stats.

Also there are two company sponsored drinkies sessions coming up.

ntl is in my opinion a poor employer, with little respect for the majority of its' staff. A small section pretty much universally based at Hook love it, though they might as well work for a different company to the rest of us, we saw none of the perks, etc they did and were paid considerably less even those who were more technically experienced and skilled.

[Shep]

I would happily see ntl ran into the ground, the people who run the company dont deserve to be there. Time for change !!!!

P

[Escapee]

Originally Posted by Ignition

Hrm how many of the impressive cars at Crawley are owned by ntl employees and how many by Arquiva I wonder.

There are some semi-technical departments in Hook which are vastly overpaid and overtrained considering the rather dubious results they consistently turn out which have to be corrected by other less well paid departments to actually work. (Yes ntl you can send these guys on all the courses in the world and pay them stupid amounts, doesn't make them good at what they do!)

Since my job change I've been on more courses (in 2.5 weeks) than I was in a year with ntl, I'm paid more, respected more, work in a more pleasant environment where there's more to life than just stats.

Also there are two company sponsored drinkies sessions coming up.

ntl is in my opinion a poor employer, with little respect for the majority of its' staff. A small section pretty much universally based at Hook love it, though they might as well work for a different company to the rest of us, we saw none of the perks, etc they did and were paid considerably less even those who were more technically experienced and skilled.

I agree with all that you say, I may of been from ntl for a long time but people working in COBI say things are even worse than they were 4 years ago.

There was always a core of corporate engineers in Hook, and there were a few rejects who had been kicked out of Telewest because they didn't come upto scratch. The core used to stick together and back one another up over bad decisions, and backstab anyone who showed them up for what they were.

It may not seem a nice thing to say, but the company deserves to go down the pan. Through all the redundancies many of the worst technical employees are still in there raking in the bucks.

It can all be blamed on the top level management attitude, that says employ people with degrees but no experience and send them on a few training courses to make them engineers overnight. Some technical disciplines at corporate and regional level have ended up with low skill levels and no real experienced people for them to learn from.

I personally learn a lot more if I am thrown in with people of greater experience, as it becomes a challenge to catch up. I'm sure most people are the same, and the level of skills can only be as good as the best in a department.

[Ignition]

Originally Posted by Escapee

There was always a core of corporate engineers in Hook, and there were a few rejects who had been kicked out of Telewest because they didn't come upto scratch. The core used to stick together and back one another up over bad decisions, and backstab anyone who showed them up for what they were.

I personally learn a lot more if I am thrown in with people of greater experience, as it becomes a challenge to catch up. I'm sure most people are the same, and the level of skills can only be as good as the best in a department.

Can think of a couple of chaps without trying hard who rake in silly salaries, one of them who I spoke to a while back (while attending my only 'proper' training course in my entire time at ntl not a freebie thrown together) had just come back from a course in Europe, and was off for another course the week after the course we shared.

Drove an insanely expensive car, and knew far far less than me about the subject matter in hand, nor was it really that relevant to his job, he was just on the course because he could be. He was also discussing his company paid for CCNP and the CCIE he was in the process of doing.

The fact he had no operational experience with ntl and had been responsible for some fairly monumental cockups which had to be fixed by staff being paid a fraction of his salary but who actually knew the network was, of course, irrelevant.

There's one rule for Hook based employees on the engineering side and quite a different set of rules for most of the rest of the company. A lot of it just comes down to how well connected the boss is and how good he is at BS and **** kissing though. Old boys' network alive and well and going strong at ntl.

I won't go into how hopelessly convoluted some processes are, or how minor and vital alterations to some equipment have to be signed off by all and sundry, half of whom have nothing to do with the equipment in question in their position it's just the way things are done that even though they don't understand, don't want to or may not care they still have to approve these things. (Cable and Wireless network and original ntl have completely different processes still, absolutely farcical but sadly true that the two still aren't integrated and God help Telewest / ntl staff, those of you worried about things changing any time soon really can RELAX).

Struggling to get over how different my new employer is, a full week of advanced professional training in my first 3 weeks there, along with a proper company induction and meet / greet with rest of team including company paid for food and drinks.

Won't mention how much my salary has gone up, or how much more responsibility I have, though being encouraged to actually use the skills I have and use some invention to resolve issues, along with being encouraged to step out of my strict role is nice.

Ta ntl, bite me