RTX reviews

A def culture problem in El Segundo, too many levels of mid and upper level management making incompetent decisions, turnover, old school and lack creativity in the good ole boy network(s). Unfortunately, favortism, nepotism and rule by an iron fist in some depts still apply here. Recognition or promotion only applies if your nose isnt where its supposed to be. Respect... talk, talk, talk, and no...some just keep on talking. Ethics...more talk and not enough real behavior modification. Profit metrics and who gets the RBI are the key drivers for programs. Any room for customer? Another poster commented on lack of eye contact or recognition in the hallways, what, do i dress funny? not up to your standard to at least acknowledge ones very existance? The wasted tax payer money and failed X-Lounge playroom, (the Google Experiment) has the same people "playing" while the rest of us working stiffs are ruled by militant management who are just looking for the opportunity to catch anyone "goofing off". Now that the GAO money well is running dry, the products are suffering, the people are suffering..but corp profits, RBI's and cash are up!, so many of you are sitting on a overhead charge. If you are assigned to a successful program, good luck, someone higher up will def cram their way up onto your turf and steal your success thunder, thats the Raytheon Way of doing business. Stressful.....the number of ambulances/fire dept visits, sudden deaths and illnesses, must be having an affect on the bottom line, higher insurance premiums and OSHA recordables. Lastly, young people, begin your career here, take as much knowledge as you can and move on to another where you will be valued, respected and treated like you are human, unless you like to be mean, "mean people are more successful than nice people"--so the story goes. The older crowd is unfortunately stuck waiting to claim payout for their years, if they survive that is.

Massive amounts of management overhead -- not uncommon to have 3 to 5 management types that you have to status (sometimes everyday). Getting permission to publish an article takes 6 signatures across 3 states. Terrible physical facilities; old buzzing lights, 40 year old cube furniture (the QA stamp on my surface says "April, 1971"), building vibrations you can see in the surface of your coffee. The situation is made worse by executive leadership constantly updating their offices. Complaints are usually met with "Well you should have seen it in 1977 when people back here smoked." It's 2011 guys, maybe we should raise the bar a bit. Note that most of the complaints here are specific to the North Texas area. CA and MA look more like the recruitment videos. Morale is not great; again, sense is that executives are the only true employees, the rest of us are just a way to bill hours. Even little things like executive staff getting small sinks in their areas while engineers have to trek water from the bathroom for coffee brings home just how little engineering means to management. Constant cramming of employees into ever smaller spaces reduces productivity (ever try to debug a problem across multiple parallel threads while 50 people around you are chatting?) Caste system in engineering -- EE at top, software at bottom. If you can't solder it or take a wrench to it, executives really have no idea what you're doing. This is reflected in resource allocation. As an EE you'll get a nicer pc, nicer cube, etc. Note you'll still be treking to the bathroom to get water for coffee, so it's not all suger and spice. (spice, get it?) No training for new employees -- you get more training as a new employee at Starbucks than you do at Raytheon. If the Govt. doesn't pay for something, it just doesn't happen. Not uncommon to have people with the company 5 to 10 years and still not understand engineering process. Bias against the "fly over" states. Executives / leadership sit on the coasts for the most part. Not uncommon for senior staff to still be more loyal to their old (non-existent) companies than to Raytheon; e.g. there are a lot of Hughes, E-Systems, and TI-DSEG engineers, but very, very few Raytheon engineers. A lot of the staff is RIP'd (Retired In Place). At 40-something I'm the youngest in most of my meetings. Far too many people are waiting to start their pension (the longer you stay the more you get). The company owns every idea you produce. As one Raytheon attorney put it "if you create a new fishing lure in your garage with 3 buddies, Raytheon owns 33%". This is standard in corporate America, but still depressing. Very little incentive to push new ideas forward, especially if they are not in Raytheon's traditional product list. Again, like most companies, Raytheon innovates through M&A. Raytheon is not a single company, but a loose coalition of Govt. programs. Understand that above all. For engineering, your career depends on the program you're attached to.