Doug's Career at Verizon

Doug Woolley's Work Life at Verizon

About My Work

GTE and Bell Atlantic merged in 2000 to become Verizon.

I entered into the New Recruit Program on July 29, 1991, at GTE Data Services, and graduated November 13, 1991.
NRD Graduation

After working for GTE (now Verizon) in the Customer Service Billing System (CBSS) area on the domestic side for almost 4 years, I then accepted a position with Commercial Services supporting CBSS for our international customers. This enabled me to travel and work in the countries of Venezuela and Portugal from 1995 through 2000 with periodic trips back to Tampa, Florida where I have maintained a home.

Since December 15, 2000, my family and I are back in the USA, just after the completion of the merger of GTE and Bell Atlantic to form Verizon. I have functioned as a Systems Engineer offering expertise on technical and operational aspects of the Billing system that Verizon has sold to CANTV (in Venezuela) and to Portugal Telecom. From June of 2002 to March of 2009, I worked night shifts on the domestic side of Verizon by running, monitoring, and trouble-shooting all mainframe application systems (including CBSS) for all regions of the United States.

From 2009 to 2016, I worked during the day as a Web Developer and Administrator in a Windows 7 Professional environment, programming in languages such as ASP.NET, C#.NET, Visual Basic 6, VB.NET, Java EE (Enterprise Edition), JavaScript, XHTML, on IDE's such as Visual Studio, Eclipse, and Expression Web, and using Databases such as SQL Server, Access, and MySQL. As of April 13, 2014, I received a significant promotion to a Senior Member Technical Staff (SMTS), and I was extremely excited and thankful!

From late 2016 to first quarter of 2019, I worked in Cloud Computing, utilizing public cloud technologies of Amazon Web Services (AWS). Further, I was recently certified as both an AWS Developer (Associate Level) and an AWS Solutions Architect (Associate Level). See my AWS page. Using an AWS platform with Linux instances, I was maintaining and enhancing a web application utilizing Java, Maven & SpringBoot, Web Service API's, React/Redux, HTML5, CSS3, Java Script, and MySQL.

As of first quarter of 2019, I ended my fulfilling career with Verizon, taking the generous "VOLUNTARY Separation Package" offered to 44,000 management employees (of which about 11,000 accepted it), and I started a new career as a software engineer with JPMorgan Chase & Co, one of the world's most admired companies.

From June 2002 until 2019, I worked at the main Tech Center at One East Telecom Parkway in Temple Terrace, Florida. There are four security clearance areas that I must pass before I can sit at my desk and work with my group.


GTE and Bell Atlantic merged on July 1, 2000, forming a new company by the name of Verizon. This new company employs approximately 260,000 people. When I worked for Commercial Services and came back to the USA, I resided here at the Riverside Building in Temple Terrace, Florida.	I worked on the 4th floor of this beautiful, spacious, modern 5-story building, known as the Riverside Building.

Travels to Caracas to work with CANTV (Telephone company of Venezuela)

The main CANTV building where I sometimes worked while in Caracas, Venezuela. It could be seen easily from my hotel room at the 5-star Caracas Hilton.	For a while, Will, Dave, and I worked for CANTV at this location, making ourselves available to help with software related problems in the Customer Billing Services System (CBSS).
The Venezuelans were fun to work with and were quite friendly!	I had the pleasure of entertaining a group of Venezuelans when they came to the U.S. to work with GTE.

Travels to Lisbon to work with PT (Portugal Telecom)

From 1997 to 2000, I had the privilege of working with many wonderful people at Portugal Telecom. Some of the technicians were hired from Brazil, where they also speak Portuguese.

More pictures working at Portugal Telecom are available for viewing.

Team Build Day

(February 16, 2001)

The group that I worked in had a "team build day" that started at our manager's home in the luxurious community of Cheval. After a light breakfast, we journeyed as a group to the putting green of the 6th hole on the TPC golf course inside Cheval where the Seniors PGA tournament was being played. This was the 1st day of the 3-day Verizon sponsored Golf Classic. It was interesting to see the professionals play in front of our eyes. We even saw Jack Nicklaus chip out of the sand and still PAR the hole. As the time approached noon, we headed back to Liz's home for lunch. After lunch, most of us walked through the golf course to the 18th hole to see some of the players finish up the round. After Jack Nicklaus finished, some of us walked to the side of the road at the 17th Tee to be picked up by Liz's husband. It was a great day for all of us! Liz (and Tom Colding) took pictures so that we would remember the day.


Our Secretary Darlene Good (she really is a good secretary and will be missed!), Director Jan DeHaven, and Manager Liz Smith.		Inside Liz's home, the guys chat around the kitchen counter.


Watching the pro's on the 6th hole was fascinating. We all tried to be as quiet as we could, especially when they were in the motion of stroking the golf ball.

An amazing shot by the most famous name in golf history--Jack Nicklaus.		Norma, Bobbi, and I eating lunch; They are great company (but don't bring up "Health Insurance").

Travel to Pearl River, NY to our Verizon Blue Hill building (April 2005)

For 3 days and nights, I provided technical training on ESP (Enterprise Systems Platform) to technicians, a project lead, and a technical manager at Blue Hill, using training documentation that I had developed in Tampa prior to my trip. Verizon uses the first and second floors of the wide rectangular building, which is where I spent my working hours.

Travel to Andover, MA to our Verizon Andover Data Center (May 2005)

For 3 days and nights, I provided technical training on ESP (Enterprise Systems Platform) to 10 technicians at the Andover Data Center, using training documentation that I had developed in Tampa prior to my trip. Verizon has a small presence of I.T. (Information Technology) personnel in this building, located at 15 Shattuck Road in Andover. The second floor is where everyone works and it is also where we had our five training sessions.

Travel to Freehold, NJ to our Verizon Freehold building (September 2005)

For 2 days and nights, I provided technical training on ESP (Enterprise Systems Platform) to technicians and project leads at Freehold, using training documentation that I had developed in Tampa prior to my trip. The four 5-hour sessions went very well. It was nice to meet so many new faces!

Travel to Colorado Springs, CO to our Verizon datacenter (April 2008)

For 4 days and nights, I provided technical training on ESP (Enterprise Systems Platform) to technicians at Colorado Springs, using training documentation that I had developed previously. The three training sessions were very well received, and I got to meet many more friendly people. It was nice to get to work with them further as I sat with them "on the job" and shared some further aspects of ESP. Also, Colorado Springs exceeded my expectations of a place to visit. It was extremely interesting to journey up Pike's Peak (the 2nd most visited mountain in the world) and to visit the Garden of the Gods, which consists of several miles of beautiful huge rocks.

Travel to Fort Wayne, IN to our Verizon datacenter (March 2010)

Traveling to Indianapolis on vacation with my wife who would be working (speaking at Women's Conference), I suggested the idea to my boss that I could provide training to employees in our nearby Fort Wayne datacenter. She liked the idea and bounced it off of the personnel in Fort Wayne, who responded positively to the suggestion. As a result, I rented a car and ventured two hours to Fort Wayne to train seven technicians on ESP (Enterprise Systems Platform), using training documentation that I had developed previously. The 4.5 hour training session went very well. Afterwards, I met with two Web Administrator/Developers to train them on Expression Web 2, which I have used to maintain our Web tools. It was nice to see the datacenter where so many of my former co-workers had worked.

Bring Your Child to Work Day (April 2010)

This was a very special day for Dimitri since it was his first time going to work with me and seeing where I work and what I do (at my workplace).

During some of the time while I was working on the computer, Dimitri was working on his masterpiece.

Verizon launched the Verizon Volunteers program that matches funds for employee contributions to charitable organizations, whether that contribution be time or money.