MDA reviews

Long hours of work and high productivity expected - but compensation has lagged (sometimes 0% annually and no more than 1-2% increase annually for the last several years - except for upper management - the only ones to get stock options & bonuses). CEO is super cheap - he tried to sell off the systems & space business 4-5 yrs ago but sale was blocked by the CDN Government. Then business in the other half of the company began to tank (coincident with the US and UK housing market crashes) and this business was then sold off for a reasonable price (bulk of $ from this sale was given to shareholders as dividends and to Sr. management as bonuses - very little given to regular employees as compensation - rest used to buy a Comms satellite interest in the U.S.). Richmond BC contingent of company is stuggling and this year laid-off 15% of staff with another 8-10% leaving on their own accord - represents a significant brain drain. Brampton business unit hit with even greater percentage of layoffs. Overall, employee moral has taken a beating and most staff have a very cynical view and general lack of faith in upper management (whose response has been to squeeze budgets even further while instituting several major and confusing reorganizations). Advancement is based on who you know, not what you know or have accomplished, and senior management is an old boy's club (no women allowed).

- Senior management and executives are fearful of competition in commercial space endeavours, despite having been far in the lead world-wide in relevant technologies. That lead has eroded, and management prefers that we assume the usual role as a sub-contractor for hire. - Gross inefficiency is everywhere and sometimes even encouraged. This lowers morale and further lowers efficiency. - Dead wood is kept around. Some staff have severely atrophied skills, and many people are wholly bought-in to out-dated processes and baggage from old programs, or are incapable of making a decision. - Potential customers are sometimes turned off by our high price. Overheads are high. - Careers are stagnating both in technical staff and management. Result is a lot of cruft clogging up the advancement chain, little fiefdoms in line management and above, and ultimately poor program performance. - Canada's gov't is incapable of making a commitment to space programs without the US first leading the way, so there have not been (m)any real new flight programs in Brampton in several years. A decade of prototypes gets old after a while, and as mentioned, management is unwilling to take matters into their own hands on the commercial side. - There is an overt adversarial relationship between HR and technical staff. I was amazed at this when I joined, assuming HR is supposed to be on the employees' side and that employees would negotiate with management. Not the case. - Others have mentioned the pay situation. Yeah it's lower than industry averages by a considerable margin, and yeah that's a stated part of the company's business plan because they know that few space opportunities exist in Canada. Historically, attrition has been right where they wanted it. But good people are leaving regularly now and morale is pretty low.