ABB reviews

Large Company with much politics. Trying to get anything done quickly is impossible. As a marketing manager, it was very difficult working with marketing communications (the people who are responsible for corporate image and rule of how documents and other media should look.) They always shot down our ideas because they didn't fit with the European mentality, even though they fit perfectly with a US customer. ABB is a European company which means most discisions are by committee and consensous instead of a dictator style. Trying to get consensous on everything is impossible or you end up with something that no one likes. The Web site was terrible when I was there but it's improved a bit since then.

My original subdivision was poorly run: nepotism was a problem; management did not communicate with the staff; and morale was poor. We repeatedly faced reorganizations. However, we were too small to attract C level attention until the damage was irreversible. There were (are?) some issues caused by the madcap acquisition period (1980's to 2000). As a result of ABB's expansion, there were parallel functions in different ABB organizations, but communication between such groups was rare. Effort has been made to consolidate, but an emphasis on price rather than value has lead to shift of established operations from US/Europe to newly formed groups in Asia. As a result, much hard-won knowledge has undoubtedly been lost.