Nortel employees speak out: Hopes of becoming multimillionaires dashed

21.8 years of Nortel were enough for me. Mike Z. keep the same mid-management that daily were bleeding the company dry of cash. They layed off the true workers of Nortel and keep the high dollar mid-management thieves. Now they stopped my severance package tell Mike Z. I hope you can sleep at night. I hope the next time he looks for a job they tell him (yea right) good job you did for Nortel.

Thanks Alvin, noted earlier this week that severance payments to laid off Nortel employees have been frozen by the bankruptcy. The contact number for laid off Nortel employees and pensioners: 1-800-676-4636.
Brad Reese
BradReese.Com Cisco Refurbished

I started at Nortel in the 80's and was layed off in 2006. I can tell you that the problems began with the Bay Networks merger.

Bay was checkmated by Cisco, and for some strange and sad reason Nortel decided to follow Bay's losing managers and strategy, turning a once strong and proud company into an also-ran in the enterprise market.

They destroyed a vibrant reseller marketing strategy and replaced it with a non-functional direct touch plan that did nothing but compromise decades long reseller relationships and allow valueless ex-Bay reps. to receive compensation for work they didnt do (i.e.- Hey Mr. Reseller what business are you about to close? I need to know so that I can get comp'ed on it).

Some wedged themselves between high-end clients and the Nortel resellers that had spend years building real relationships, declared themselves owners of the accounts and proceeded to undermine long-term plans with short-term sales goals.

Those scenarios ran rampant thoughout the company from 2000 to at least 2006. And the result: resellers that were once fiercly loyal to Nortel now sell 5-10 different telecom solutions with Nortel just another player in the middle of the mix.

Actions speak louder than words and despite touting the importance of their enterprise resellers, Nortel (via Bay Networks) decided that a couple thousand internal reps. could do a better job than ten thousand reseller reps. Obviously they were wrong.

WRONG!

One of the reasons NT is in its current state is due the attitudes of long-timers like you two, who probably added no value to the company and focused on legacy products/technology.

The Bay Networks aquisition was one of the best buys out of Roth's outrageous spending spree. The people were dynamic and products leading edge, providing a real alternative to Cisco in the enterprise space...which many customers loved.

Most of the very good Bay people (techy's, senior managers, sales guys etc) left when they saw what Nortel were doing to the company.

The Nortel ethos of politics, bureaucracy, non-reward and the 'NT boys club' was the reason for the demise of Bay Networks...and Nortel.

Also not taking advantage of emerging technologies such as IPT when voice is there "heritage"..prior to the likes of Cisco is a major factor.

Vyatta vice president Dave Roberts wrote:
"In the telecom growth spurt of the late 1990s, Nortel was one of the fastest growing companies and stocks in the world. Unfortunately, the company got very off-balance as it grew. It was very clear when I was there that anybody who wanted a long term career in Nortel had to be associated with the carrier group, preferably an optical product line. That was where all the momentum was within the company. If you were an employee working on other things (enterprise products in my case), it was clear that you weren't going to get any of the investment, attention, or promotions. In contrast, the optical management teams were masters of the universe.
"When the bubble burst in late 2000/early 2001, the company's 'core businesses' were smack in the middle of the action (or sudden lack of action, really). With the chair suddenly pulled out from under it, Nortel could not retrench quickly enough. They had allowed many of their other businesses to decay as the company got tunnel vision with all-things-optical, and there was nothing to fall back on. This was not the beginning of the end, but rather the end of the beginning, however."
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Brad Reese
BradReese.Com Cisco Refurbished

I started with the company in 1974 and left in 2002 and all but the last 3-4 years I considered it a privilege to work at Nortel. I spent most of my career in the manufacturing, operations, quality and service side of the business. Ten of those years were dedicated to developing service programs and relationships with Nortel's channel partners.

John Roth, Bill Conners, Frank Dunn, and other so called visionaries at Nortel were at the root of the demise of this once great company. They were so consumed by acquisitions (Bay Networks) and competing against John Chambers at Cisco. By focusing all energies in trying to be like Cisco they began to ignore their core businesses.

Roth, Conners, Dunn and other yes men/women dismantled a world class manufacturing and egineering team after they already spent millions of dollars in upgrading facilities. These so called bright of the brightest began to shuttle Nortel’s highly respected distribution strategy and started competing against their channel partners.

Are these the real reasons for the fall of Nortel?
Brad Reese
BradReese.Com Cisco Refurbished

I started in 1999 and left in 2005 (voluntarily), and worked in the Enterprise division. I can categorically say the issue was NOT the Bay Networks acquisition. It was inept management from the top, and a failed understanding of how to properly integrate multiple acquisitions. That combined with putting to much emphasis on one product (the optical line) led to there downfall. Lets look at this..

- Bay Networks. Arguably the #2 or #3 R&S/Switching vendor at the time of the acquisition. When 3Com went out, they were the only credible alternative to Cisco. There was competent leadership, engineering, and sales in this division. The problem came down to support from Mother Nortel. There was a complete drop in R&D, and very few new products made it to the field during the first few years after the acquisition. This combined with Nortel sucking engineering talent out of the BayNetworks business into the Optical business caused a huge loss of sales inside that division.

-Clarify. I'm not sure what Nortel was thinking when they did this. They purchased a CRM company for many billions of dollars, with no idea on how to market, sell, or support the product. This left us ALL scratching our heads, and wondering what master plan Nortel had. Well, as it turns out, they had none.

-Alteon. See BayNetworks. Nortel had no plan to keep Alteon employees around. Once the acquisition was done, most of them left.

Also, a little known secret.. for the first few years of the BayNetworks acquisition, legacy BayNetworks employees were DISCOURAGED from talking about PBX's to there customers. Mother Nortel did not want to step on the feet of there partners. It wasn't until 2000/2001 that this changed.

It was always perceived that Management was tinkering in product development as well. A product development life cycle would start, and then half way through be killed, and then re-spun. There was about 3 false starts on a IPT platform before one was actually released. Because of this, Nortel trailed Cisco and Avaya, and was never able to catch up.

They will not come out of Chapter 11, they will liquidate. Most of the engineering/sales talent has LONG since left, leaving a shadow of what once was. While there marketing department has picked up some in the past few years with some good advertising campaigns, it cant make up for a far inferior product.

The CS1000 was not, is not, and never will be competeive to CallManger or the Avaya offering. There routing and switching line is made up primarily of off the shelf components, with poor software. Why in 2009 are they still selling "routing switches" with barely basic routing functionality on them (ERS5xxx, 4xxx)?

It's sad to see a company that once gave us the Option series of PBX's, Accelar, Solid Routers, and a top notch optical product be reduced to the Networking industry equivalent of Gypsy's selling used nick knacks at a flea market.

I started working for Nortel in 1997 and I couldn't stay longer than 7 months. I was only an engineer but I was convinced that the company (or its representatives) is on the wrong track and couldn't last for too long; the division was gone in two years but the company lasted for 11 long years.