Pros
- Above average pay & great insurance - Very easy to work flex time / take time off, depending on your manager of course - Cool products - Lower Level/group management is general very competent and tend to take care of their direct reports. - Despite the typical "union" attitude of some shop workers, the union workforce is very competent and good at what they do & they save engineer's butts more often than anyone will admit.
Cons
- Company is very baby boomer heavy and not many are retiring. This means there are not many opportunities for new hires and you may get stuck in some menial jobs for awhile. I think this will hurt the company in the long run because people like me are tired of wasting their time and are actively looking for jobs at competitors. So once the boomers start retiring, there will be a shortage of experienced people to pick up the slack. - Company is getting hit fairly hard with gov't spending cuts and pressure from 787/747-800 schedule slips, so there is very little "overhead" budget or company funded programs right now. - Because of the $ crunch, many "development oriented" functions like aerodynamics, propulsion, avionics, etc. are almost at the stage of laying people off due to the lack of work/budget to support people. - Middle level management (department managers & up) are hit or miss as far as competence. I think the dept managers are good at their jobs, but there are way too many upper level managers that work in bureaucratic positions between the execs running the company and the managers supporting the programs, and this muddies up everything. - Has not won a major US Gov't contract since the MDC merger!!! If we don't win a major contract in 5 yrs, the IDS division will probably be bought by Northrop or LM by 2020.