*Corporate ownership does not mix with local heritage of quick-react capabilities.
- Urgent, quick-turn programs are forced to follow corporate processes.
-- Corporate machine takes 2 weeks to do anything.
-- Most tools / processes from 1990. Strict adherence required.
-- Buying any material requires a chain of 4 people, one day of your time to hound them, and takes minimum of 2 weeks to receive.
*Local directors have lost respect of most technical staff.
- Local directors sugar-coat all communication to the extent that it's a bad joke.
- Local management culture prevents real-time negative feedback down the stack.
- Negative feedback up the stack is not tolerated. Warning first, then retribution.
* Site exists within a humans-in-seats division.
- Local site lumped into a division focused on providing bodies in gov't-owned cubicles, for the lowest cost per hour.
- Local site's labor rates affect division's bill rates.
- This means that local site's facilities are just overhead, and will be neglected.
- This means that employees are strongly encouraged to always be billable.
-- no process improvement budget
-- no internal tool development budget
*Persistent Engineering Slow Brain Drain.
- There are other local small defense companies persistently poaching anybody with any experience. Management's sugar-coating exacerbates the problem.
*Zero feedback from staffing capability to sales expectations.
- Local sales force and site management are strongly incentivized to sell, sell, sell!
- Recruiting team is asked to fill or back-fill positions, to keep up with sales. This task is impossible, due to qualifications, clearance, tight technical labor market.
- As a consequence, there is more work than can be completed. Anyone with any experience is stretched thin to cover as many projects as possible.
- Management strategy has been to hire as many interns as possible, since qualified engineers are scarce. Gotta bill the hours somehow, or director's bonus suffers.
* Beware the following pay-related stuff:
- 401(k) match doesn't vest for 3 years for new hires.
- part of 401(k) match withheld to end of calendar year (probably to help cash flow)
- golden handcuffs: tuition reimbursement, signing bonus, relocation expenses
