Downsizing company offers few opportunities for advancement
Pros
The facilities are well maintained, and management fixes work environment concerns quickly when informed, such as inadequate lighting. Safety complaints are dealt with immediately, and ethics is placed as a top priority. The company is a large corporation that has many locations and makes it easy to transfer between those locations. Employees looking for an away assignment to get experience in a new area are often accommodated easily. Section managers and team leaders, are nice and are as responsive as possible to employee concerns. Raytheon has the most schedule flexibility of any company I've ever worked for. Employees may work a standard 8-hour day, work 9 hours with every other Friday off, or take random days off using vacation time or by working into the evening some other day. One person works 10 hour days and takes most Fridays off. Raytheon pays a bonus, which is a percentage of salary every year based upon the company's performance. Pay is competitive. I work at Raytheon because the pay is good, not because I love my job or because I see a future in moving up the chain. Raytheon has, by far, the most talented engineers I have ever met at any company. While management prevents that talent from reaching its full potential (see cons), you won't find yourself explaining basic math or programming concepts to people who work for Raytheon. "Weak" team members who drag down productivity are nonexistent.
Cons
When I started at Raytheon, there were over 700 employees working in six buildings at this campus. Several years later, there are now fewer than 300 people left working in a single building, with round after round of layoffs. Layoffs occur frequently and 20-year employees have been suddenly told to leave on the same day without prior notification. Over a year passed when not a single person was hired. With few exceptions, Raytheon continues to gradually cut employee benefits. The company used to provide on-site cafeteria service (discontinued), a free gym (which later had the price increase and is now closed), and increased the price of health insurance, among other things. They even had a post office at one point (which is now closed). Achievement awards, which used to be given out in recognition of good performance, are now nonexistent. Raytheon does not pay overtime for under 48 hours of work. Some programs take advantage of this policy by mandating 47 hours of work for 40 hours' pay. Management repeatedly underestimates the amount of time it will take to accomplish tasks at Raytheon, which repeatedly leads to overtime situations and poor quality products as a result. Working inside a secure environment is stressful and can cause paranoia about things like forgetting to take a cell phone out of a pocket. Raytheon has the strictest security procedures that I have seen in the industry. Listening to music while programming is effectively prohibited, for example, despite it being allowed at comparable businesses. Unfortunately, there are few opportunities for advancement at Raytheon. Many employees receive "exceeds expectations" performance ratings year after year, and management does not promote them to higher positions.
