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Republic Wireless

Part of DISH

Is this your company?

Great on paper, not so much when you're settled in. - Anonymous employee Republic Wireless Employee Review

2.0
23 Mar 2017
Anonymous employee
Recommend
CEO approval
Business outlook

Pros

The leftover perks from the parent company were great. Team leads were very caring and worked to shield their employees from a lot of the "ish" that rolled downhill from management. It really didn't have the same toxic, competitive vibe you see at other tech companies. Good for younger graduates looking to get their feet wet before going to other companies in the area.

Cons

Department heads would often "lend out" hourly employees to do the work of salaried positions that normally required extra certification (project management, supply chain analysts, etc.) while also taking care of their hourly work. This (unsurprisingly) lead to a lot of employees getting burnt out and leaving before their six month anniversary. "Opportunities" for advancement were all too often lateral promotions or title-only promotions to temporarily boost morale while avoiding the industry standards for compensation and performance bonuses. The aforementioned burn-out created a Logan's Run environment where, outside of the highest levels of management, most employees topped out at 35, if not younger.

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Republic Wireless Response
8y
Thanks for expressing your experience at Republic. It is great that you enjoyed the benefits, environment, and experience during your time with us and found team leads to be caring leaders. We also do always value younger graduates looking to get a start and grow in their careers. In regard to "lending out" hourly team members thanks for bringing this up, we call this giving people "stretch opportunities". We are a company that believes in, and has a very solid track record, of internal promotion (our most extreme example is a former hourly intern now serving as an SVP). Internal promotion can come in the form of a traditional promotion in a current department or a lateral move. These changes are always celebrated because they align with the growth track per each individual. We do provide stretch opportunities for team members to assist on projects in new departments before fully committing to making a long term department transition (we think this sets up the person to be more successful, including realizing that the new role is not a fit at times). I'm unsure of how long you were with Republic but the timeline of these stretch opportunities vary depending on the role. Some of our most successful leaders started their careers at Republic in completely different departments; their time in a stretch opportunity gave them new learnings and supported their next career move and eventual advancement within the company. While I believe that your interpretation of stretch opportunities differs for our intent, it's important that we hear from former team members to hold us accountable and make sure that we are living up to our ideals (or knowing when we fall short despite our best intentions). As for your statement about burn-out and less than 6 month tenure, we do watch our attrition closely and factually have a low number of employees who leave so quickly (in fact, our average tenure even outside of senior leadership is strong relative to the market). Thank you for your time with the company and for your review. We wish you the best! -- Chris Chuang, co-founder & CEO

Explore other reviews about Republic Wireless

5.0
22 Dec 2021
Anonymous employee
Recommend
CEO approval
Business outlook

Pros

Great place to work environment

Cons

I can not think of bad things

2.0
18 Jan 2017
Anonymous employee
Recommend
CEO approval
Business outlook

Pros

The culture and most people you work with on a day-to-day are amazing. You, for the most part, could not ask for nicer people to work with. The Bandwidth culture of flexibility, working out at lunch, and insurance paid at 100% is awesome.

Cons

Management is dysfunctional and all over the place. They're all in their mid-30s and think they know it all. Continue to congratulate themselves on being masters of the universe, all while not being able to see past their noses and how unhappy (some of) their people are. In my time there, I don't think we ever finished something we started - and if we did, it was definitely not on time. They love to pivot to something new in the 11th hour. Management is rude/condescending/not appreciative of women, and it's definitely a "bros club". Promotions are mostly men, and mostly undeserving - inflated titles for those who kiss management rear. They also love to reward themselves. How many times has the MVP of the year been someone other than top management? Gross, guys.

3
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Republic Wireless Response
8y
Thanks for taking the time to share your experiences with us. In regard to our culture, team members, and benefits we are glad you loved these aspects of your time with us. In response to your "Con" comments, I appreciate the candor of your feedback here and am sorry your experience here led you to feel this way. Even though you are no longer here, I'd still welcome a conversation to hear more details and examples of your feedback. Ahead of then, let me address a few of your comments: 1.) Like any family or company, there are indeed times we may be a little dysfunctional and appear or actually be all over the place. That said, I'd assert that is a minority of the time, as evidenced by the fact that we've been ranked #1 by Consumer Reports for 3 years in a row, have a Net Promoter Score among our customers that is double the scores of the big carriers in our market, and are among the top 10% of private companies in tech by revenues. While we can certaintly improve and grow as leaders and as a company, those kinds of achievements do not happen by accident or pure luck. 2.) We do have leaders in their mid 30's, but also several leaders who are in their 40's and 50's as well. I would consider that a healthy diversity and would hope people would not bias against any of our leaders due to their age (be it younger or older). 3.) I can't speak for everyone, but, I certainly do not know it all and am no where close to being a master of the universe :) In fact, what I and our leadership team believe is that we only can succeed as a company by building teams of people who know more than us in different areas. It is only through this complementary diversity of knowledge, experiences, and skills that we can out perform our giant competitors. 4.) As for not seeing how unhappy some of our people are, that could very well be true despite our best efforts. We certainly do try and proactively assess the morale/ happiness of our people, however, to get this right requires a two way street. Folks who are unhappy need to be willing to constructively and candidly share how they feel and what they believe we can change to improve upon that. This requires what some would call crucial conversations and others might label as radical candor. Unfortunately, our society and the internet has trained some of us to instead rely on anonymous forums like this one, which don't naturally foster a good open dialog. 5.) As for finishing projects on time and pivoting, that does happen at times at Republic (just like in any other business). However, there are often rationale explanations behind these situations that can be shared through open vs anonymous dialog. 6.) Lastly, as to your comments about "bro's club" and appreciation of women, please see my comments in another post on this forum. The short summary is that our leadership team (which includes multiple women) do value/ appreciate diversity of all sorts (including gender) and would be happy to share additional facts about our diversity that may clarify/ change this perception, including the records of our various historical individual awards. That said, we can always do better on this front, and will continue to strive to do so. -- Chris Chuang, co-founder and CEO
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