Telekom Malaysia (TM) — honest review from inside a GLC giant

Four years at TM across two roles. This is not the company that gets written about much, so here goes.

The scale is genuinely impressive, working on infrastructure that reaches rural communities, not just cities, gives the work meaning that startups don't always offer.

The culture is formal and hierarchical. Titles matter. Email chains are long. Nothing moves fast. But within that, there are pockets of genuine innovation, particularly in the digital and cloud divisions which operate with more agility than the traditional telco teams.

If you want to learn how large-scale infrastructure decisions are made at a national level, TM is hard to beat. If you want to move fast and iterate, you'll be miserable within six months.