Lockheed Martin reviews

15,000+ employees at the Fort Worth plant. Being a new employee can feel like being a freshman on a big campus. Very large, multi-year aeronautic programs are hard to comprehend in total. You must read up on all programs to learn what aspects are most appealing in order to move to a position that makes you happy. Career management is in your hands. Your managers will not promote you automatically, you must be your own promoter. HAving a bachelor's degree differentiates you from members of society with 4-year degrees, but at Lockheed Martin degreed employees are a dime a dozen. You will eventually need a graduate degree to move to the upper echelons. CEO Bob Stevens and company VP's and directors are outstanding, but lower-level managers do not appreciate new initiatives such as Full Spectrum Leadership and diversity. They care about their schedules & budgets, which is understandable, but they don't appreciate extra-curricular achievements. They work 40 hours & go home. EVERYONE should see Lockheed Martin as THEIR company.

Don't do it! If you're young, bright, energetic, want to take risks and do really cool work without being bogged down with horribly burdensome amounts of process and paperwork, go somewhere else if you can help it. The organization moves slowly in terms of technology and its people - it's top heavy, and loathe to get rid of dead wood within the company. You WILL wade through several layers of documentation and authority to complete any task, and you WILL encounter resistance when trying to streamline operations. Don't expect to be creative in your job, either - as a result of the fore-mentioned paperwork, this company runs on legacy systems and knowledge and hardly tolerates change. Expect a lot of classically apathetic employees who are 50+ years old going through the motions of their work, and a smaller number of people who are < 30 doing the same thing (they tend to go elsewhere after a couple of years, and with good reason). The exceptions to these demographics are a rapidly ascending small group of middle managers to fill the gap, and possibly the most unnerving group of young corporate climbers in the technical leadership programs. (Anecdotally, most participants are from lower tier schools - but to be fair, they're simply indicative of the value placed on interpersonal skills that fit the company culture over raw technical ability. That's well within the corporation's prerogative, and it's obviously a mutually beneficial relationship.) The young corporate climbers might not be unique to the company; but be sure you can buy into its culture before joining LM. I'm modifying my original statement. If you're young and energetic, LM might be the place for you, because with those qualities it should be easy to stand out. This is doubly true if you're a minority - you will see no one will looks like you in executive leadership (even more on the downside, you might get a lot of the old guard commenting on your "diversity" status; this has actually happened to me on several occasions). If your priorities lie more in line with doing actual engineering work, being able to concentrate on doing it well with other talented folks and being surrounded by people who feel the same way, go someplace else. Essentially, this company relies on stale processes and systems rather than on true innovation and efficiency.