CAE’s own worst enemy is itself. They plaster everything with the term “One CAE” and senior management seems to genuinely believe in that concept. However, they don’t walk the same walk they’re talking and the tagline has become more of a joke to those working there and couldn’t be further from describing the culture. CAE is heavily divided and siloed with departments frequently competing with each other as if they were entirely separate businesses. This is done because the company treats the budget process like the hunger games. Everyone is out to get their piece of the pie before the music stops. Defense and Civil may as well be two entirely separate companies with no relation whatsoever. Everything one does is duplicated entirely separately in the other and the two do not communicate. Then, within civil, business aviation and commercial aviation are constantly competing for resources and trying to drive the business in a direction that favors their needs over the other. This leads to exhaustive meetings filled with personal attacks, gotcha email chains, enormous quantities of duplicated work, millions of dollars spent on computer systems and processes that do exactly the same thing. Often, analysts and specialists spend a massive portion of their time simply building the case for their bosses to present to justify their work group’s continued existence. Different departments become extremely protective and territorial of their processes and this leads to a complete breakdown in cross-departmental collaboration. When I say it’s bad, it’s BAD. They reorganize the company about every year, so department leaders are constantly on the defensive to ensure their functions are still relevant in the new year. There are constant layoffs, even if in small numbers, which give people a very poor sense of job security.
