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Lockheed Martin

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Lockheed Martin reviews

4.1

83% would recommend to a friend

(14,521 total reviews)
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James D. Taiclet

82% approve of CEO

72% positive business outlook

Lockheed Martin has an employee rating of 4.1 out of 5 stars, based on 14,521 company reviews on Glassdoor which indicates that most employees have an excellent working experience there. The Lockheed Martin 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

15K reviews
1.0
Jun 7, 2010
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

Lockheed is a great name to have on your resume when you're looking for a better job. As far as actually working at Lockheed, it's a huge company doing mostly government contracting, so it's somewhat resistant to economic swings, but there have been layoffs in the last year.

Cons

Most the people in management at the Manassas site are holdovers from before the site was a Lockheed facility. These people are entrenched in their jobs and are resistant to any change. There is an incredibly strong "good ole boys" atmosphere, and it is next to impossible to advance if you're not part of the club, or willing to do some serious brown-nosing. This also leads to a culture of employees being fearful of reporting anything that's unfair, unethical, or worse out of fear of retaliation. Lockheed uses a forced ranking performance assessment process which drops employees into five performance categories, with well over half getting the middle "successful" category. The performance evaluation criteria are intentionally extremely vague so that management can justify giving anybody any assessment. Even with such a wide open system, the managers don't even bother to make it appear that they actually follow the system to evaluate employees. I know from looking at my manager's publicly available Outlook calendar that the managers finished ranking employees in my department last year BEFORE the peer and lead ("multi-raters") input was collected. They didn't even bother to hear what coworkers had to say about us! They just got together, sat in a room, and decided which employees they liked best.

2.0
Apr 4, 2009
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

It is very fast paced, and you will learn a lot in a very short amount of time--if you are not afraid to jump in and get your hands dirty. I highly recommend it as a first job out of college--you'll receive a lot of support in learning the ropes of manufacturing operations and engineering, especially from more senior individual contributors. It'll seem pretty daunting at first, but you'll learn a couple of skills--namely multi-tasking and prioritizing--that will help you throughout the rest of your career. Also, it is a product you can take pride in--very challenging to engineer and manufacture at a competitive rate, yet we do it.

Cons

The creme doesn't necessarily rise to the top. Lockheed Martin is a matrixed organization--meaning the people you report to and perform for on a daily basis (i.e., program managers) aren't the ones determing who gets raises/promotions. That would be functional management, who seem to be in a completely different world. Many of their initiatives look great from their perspective, but end up wasting program budget with no tangible benefit when implemented. Of course, no one actually validates the alleged cost savings after implementation. So go ahead and take credit for something that hasn't happened yet, then move on to your next big project! If you curry management's favor by making these initiatives your priority, you'll move up the ladder; even faster if you have a sponsor in upper management. There are some exceptions, but many of these ladder-climbers don't have the respect of their peers and/or program managers. Maybe it's just this particular site, but the office politics are terrible. Coworkers will throw you under the bus for the slightest mistake, especially when management is looking for a scapegoat. It amazes me that if someone is protected, they can toss out allegation after allegation without any repercussions, no matter how many times the accused are later exonerated. Others will spend more time and effort for a job poorly done, than it would to take to actually do the job right.

3.0
Nov 20, 2008
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

Lockheed is a large company. You meet a lot of interesting people, the work always varies, and it's hard to get bored.

Cons

As a subcontractor, it is hard to get hired full time, despite the fact you are told management would like to hire you. Lots of overtime sometimes, and you also get let go if there isn't enough work to do. They will bring you back if they like you, however. Also if you are a subcontractor, you don't receive any of the benefits, and sometimes people treat you differently. There are also a lot of politics in the office and different departments.

Viewing 115 - 117 of 14,521 Reviews

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