Birch Communications (Post Cbeyond Acquisition)
Pros
There are absolutely no Pros that can be expressed to encourage anyone to work at Birch Communications. Other than the remaining Cbeyond people that work there are an amazing few people to work with and for.
Cons
Firstly, Birch as a company does not care about anything other than the bottom line. This means they take every avenue that they can to get out of doing anything but a attempting to make money. Secondly, the Executive staff are horrible to work for. The COO commonly and regularly defaces employees (having driven more than 5 people that I know, myself included, into just getting up and leaving the company -- with or without a new role). The CEO is totally unapproachable, and when you do approach him there is a definite air of Him being better than you. Birch employees have no understanding of HR policy, other than how they can break it and get away with it. Thirdly, The cultural change was so drastic and so extreme, that surviving in it was impossible. All our whiteboards were taken away (they had to pry mine out of my cold dead rigor-mortis ridden hands), people were no longer allowed to congregate in small groups at their cubes to brainstorm or talk problems out. Those kinds of things were forced into conference rooms. Use a few well-placed personal items to personalize your space (translation, anymore than 2 personal items on your desk, and you are written up). Window blinds should always remain lowered (translation, no direct sunlight into the office). Overhead lights should remain on during working hours (translation, no dark offices, including NOC areas). Vending snacks and drinks are allowed in the work area. (translation, anything that requires you to use a fork to eat it is expressly not permitted and must be eaten in a break room). Only managers with direct reports and above will be provided with visitor chairs (translation, your office chair looks like everyone else's and unless you management you can't have two). Fourthly, The company does not follow their own guidelines. Harassment of any kind will not be tolerated and should be reported to management (except birch executives, who can do whatever they want, and whenever they want to do it, including and not withstanding getting in front of an entire room of people and calling a resigning manager a a-hole, and berating their performance and worth to the company). Mentioning the name birch in a negative light in any way shape form or fashion in the hallways will get a Birch employee to stand up and approach you (and in what I can only describe as a Scientology like fashion) precede to ask you what your problem is, and to keep it to yourself. Birch Guidelines assert "Be honest in our communication. Treat each other fairly, with respect, and courtesy.". Birch employees themselves are far from honest or respectful. In 3 phases of lay-offs numerous employees were pushed out for speaking out. Layoffs were public and visible to everyone around. People were personally walked to their vehicles (if you were a director or higher), and publicly humiliated in front of their peers. Fifth, Birch does not understand process at all. Ive been away from the company for over 3 months, and a Birch employee contacted me about an outage (on my cell phone, because it was still listed in the documentation as a primary source of contact) regarding corporate systems. To make matters worse, I advised them who to call internally, and instead of doing that, they contacted another former employee. All PMs were let go , and Birch practices no form of Project management at all, and do not use a safe and classic Agile approach (they probably let go all of the ScrummMasters too). Changes to production gear is done in the middle of the day, and no process to customer affect is taken. No risk management is engaged either. Bottom Line: Don't work at Birch.