Lockheed is very top heavy, and too many layers of incompetent & redundant management. HR is basically an arm of the management and does not really care if the employee is being done harm. HR does not represent the employees, only the management. Can not get an honest and straight forward answer or support from management on most "real"issues. Layoffs are common and there is a general fear among most employees (unless you are a part of the selected
inner-click) about lack of job security. The annual performance appraisals are very subjective with the employees having very little meaningful recourse to challenge an unfair assessment. Performance Analysis have company and management agenda as a driver that always trumps a fair and objective employee assesment; same goes with tiny annual salary increases, if you are lucky to get one in the first place. Most of the jobs require high security clearance, but trying to get specific answers from the company security office is a very frustrating & the norm is the individual never gets a clear answer about their security investigation.
Lockheed like many other similar size companies like to hire from pet schools (with a small number from non-pet schools which is really a smoke screen to hide the biasness in their company wide hiring process), and generally those few from pet schools are given opportunity for the management path & entry into ELDP programs. A lot of Electrical, Civil and Mechaical/Aerospace engineers are hired but then many are pushed to do stuff completely unrelated with their educational background for prolonged periods of time, causing them to loose critical technical skills learnt in college;
A huge company but many layers of highly paid but redundant management can be cut to make it more streamline and agile; unfortunately the non-management employees are cut first. Finally, the "broadly understood meaning and concept of Diversity" is completely altered in this company to maintain the status-quo; Lockheed brags about Diversity in its advertisements but the truth is most (~ 90%) of the middle and upper management & leadership is either white men and white women; but very little percentage of African Americans, Asians and Hispanics are represented in the middle and top leadership of the company. There is a systemic effort to continue with the status-quo behind the drum beating of diversity. Sadly, these problems are alive in most business areas of Lockheed Martin and not just in the IS&GS business area that I work in.
