Overall, I was not impressed with the leadership, product quality, team synergy, work environment, review system, career growth, and turf conflicts at this company and ultimately decided to leave for greener pastures. It was fine for a couple of years but in the long-term it was not a viable environment for me. You are essentially filling the role of a mercenary when working here. The engineering teams are led by the engineers who have hung around the longest while many of their former peers have left for better opportunities. The role of the engineer is to charge an hour to a Government project and the company turns around and bills that hour to the customer of which a portion ends up in the engineer's paycheck. As a result, the priority from upper management is to burn up as many hours as allowable which often comes at the expense of producing a quality product. Despite the Corporate slogans about performing with excellence, the management is more than happy with a solution that poorly meets requirements and is completed within the allotted hours rather than spending the extra time to implement it the right way. Before the hours run out on your project, be sure to start asking around where the other projects are. If you do not have a project to bill hours to, your functional manager may try to find you some makework on another project, otherwise you may consider yourself on notice. As a result, the environment is fear-driven. The employees are always concerned about what is going to happen when their project ends. The byproduct is a group of engineers of the type who are forever grateful to have a job and are therefore willing to put up with managerial nonsense that includes harassment training, charade reviews, and mock-career-discussions. The career path for engineers is short. If you do not move toward a management role, your opportunities for advancement are limited. The general perception among the Engineers is that the company does not appreciate them and views them as replaceable cogs. The attitude of the management is that of Government - if an employee quits, they will hire another one. The review system is shrouded in secrecy, mystery, and hand-waving as management is uncomfortable admitting that it is a charade and prefers to tap-dance around the issue and put on a happy face. Employees who ask too many questions about the system's fairness create the perception causing trouble. Essentially, the functional management is given a fixed quota of ratings from a limited pool that are to be doled out. The review process consists of what is internally referred to as "the rack and stack" Belle-curve where the competing managers have a sit-down and figure out who goes where on the curve. Some employees are fought for and others are compromised on. Since their quota system makes it mathematically impossible for everyone to be performing at an acceptable level, someone always has to draw the short straw and receive the poor performance review which will then be used to justify the denial of a merit increase. During the review phase, the employees are also directed to engage in a game of charades by collecting peer feedback which consists of finding your 3-4 best friends within the company and having them say some nice things about you. In some cases people were writing their own peer feedback as their colleagues found that easier rather than having to write it themselves. The worst part of the system is that it places the employees in a psychological position of competing with their team members which severely impacts team performance as everyone knows that it is in their own best interest to carve out a piece for themselves and become the go-to expert rather than threaten their own supremacy by actively helping to get others up to speed. I never saw anyone laid off as the result of a review, but certainly it could be easily spun in a negative way if your manager were directed to trim the headcount. As a result, the performance review time is always a degrading period of low morale among the staff as everyone is jockeying and trying to not be the one standing when the music goes off. There are those who benefit from the system and are quietly supportive of it. These tend to be the engineers with the most tenure or those who have managed to carve out a specialty on an important project or curry social favor with their manager. This creates a disadvantage for new engineers as the performance rating of a new engineer is compared other engineers in the same pay-grade even though the others may have been with the company for a longer period of time and therefore have an uneven advantage. Management also imposes a passive-aggressive overtime policy. They unofficially want everyone clocking an extra couple hours each week which some individuals interpret as an extra 15 minute restroom break in the morning and an extra 15 minute restroom break in the afternoon; it is impossible to police yet the cost gets passed on to the customer and the company generates additional profit while it absolves itself of all ethical liability by hanging the responsibility on the employee. Overall, I would recommend this workplace to recent college graduates who need a couple years of industry experience before finding a better work environment. Also I would recommend this to those near-retirement looking for somewhere to ride out for a few years and collect a paycheck.
