CAE reviews

3.8

69% would recommend to a friend

(1,799 total reviews)
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Matthew Bromberg

56% approve of CEO

61% positive business outlook

CAE has an employee rating of 3.8 out of 5 stars, based on 1,799 company reviews on Glassdoor which indicates that most employees have a good working experience there. The CAE employee rating is in line with the average (within 1 standard deviation) for employers within the Aeroespacial y defensa industry (3.6 stars).

Reviews by job title

2K reviews
1.0
Apr 23, 2020
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

Extremely interesting industry Great values, you are there to save people’s lives. You feel rewarded with your work. Great improvements possible An industry that gather some of the most passionate professional I have ever met CEO is a gentleman and overall I would say that executives are quite knowledgeable Proudly Canadian

Cons

Despite the amazing enthusiasm of some for the engineering and flying the industry is driven by fossils that love status quo. In order to face that CAE created a new section called digital accelerator, please make yourself a favor and stay away from that, it’s a trap. The middle management (VP and director level) is totally infected by politics, no challenge possible, people with very poor soft skills, unnecessarily rudeness and bullying behaviour. Some directors work 12+ hours per day and they expect you do the same, weekends? Forget that! Extremely, extremely long hours. A culture of “don’t even think you can challenge me” rules over CAE like the bubonic pest. Unskilled people on key roles are basically positioned because their connections with vp’s instead their own capabilities. People live in a constant fear of losing their jobs if they look or say something that they shouldn’t. They claim that they empower people, that is a vicious lie, they do the absolute opposite! no empowerment of teams, but a dictatorial environment creating toxic “yes man” employees and unfortunately helping to augment the huge disconnection from executives of what is the reality of the employees. Without exaggeration: The worst work experience in my entire career.

1.0
Jun 24, 2016

Avoid, avoid, avoid

Anonymous employee
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

If you're chummy with management or a suck up, you're probably set for life. Some staff are excellent. Get to use the flight simulators.

Cons

Spy on employees outside working hours (I'm leaving as little identifying information as possible, they're that vindictive). Empty promises and platitudes from management at all levels. Blatant favouritism and cronyism. Some bullying. Laughably poor training. Very confusing appraisal system. Salary increase dependent on ability to complete the appraisal rather than actual performance. Take any opportunity to shaft employees. Actively hostile to anyone suffering personal or health problems. HR unsupportive of staff and very deferential to management. Process is more important than people. Managers place great importance in their titles. You better know your place. Processes dominated by Montreal even when inappropriate. Haemorrhaging permanent staff. Distinct elitist feel (eg Christmas Party is black tie only).

2.0
Mar 31, 2016

The buracracy is real

Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

- Flexible working hours - Nice office building - Nice perks - Opportunity to go to conferencies (it's not counted as working time tho) - Table tennis, table soccer, etc. - Alot of team/company building event which is sponsored by the company. - Friendly people

Cons

- CAE is about 15-20 years behind the C++ industry - They prefer alot of programmers over less, but competent ones. - Only C++98 - ScrumBut (it's not even close to scrum) - The coding guideline was written by C++ novices, but it's mandatory to follow it. - Unreadable codebases. - Overcomplicated product - Hierarchical company structure - Low salary (if you want an increase, you have to fight for it) - No challange - Terrible, sloppy inner tools and libs. - High buracracy You can't have any impact. The management invest crapload of money on creating problems, but rarely on things which could make an impact. (like useful, modern tools, switching from bad inner tools to open source, good alternates etc) - The sites don't like each other, because they "steal" the work from each other. - Cross-site teams: there is not a single product which fully owned by the site. Every decisions has to go through Montreal buracracy. Communication is sloppy. (6hr time-lag) - Really accurate work tracking (bosses want to now for every minute what are you worked on. :o) In reality it's 9-10+ hours work per day. People have to track breaks and alot of times you have nothing to do. You just can't say that, so sometimes there is nothing to track. Even tho it's not your fault, sometimes you ending up tracking nothing. - Fluctuacion is high. - The management don't delegate any decision to lower level programmers, they can push you from one team to another without even asking you. - The management is not trustworthy, they keep back informations from their people and from their bosses. - Management only care about numbers, but 99% of the metrics doesn't make any sense. It's frustrating. - They don't do anything with your problems before you quit. (But then it's way too late)

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