Lockheed Martin Software Engineer reviews

When you start at Lockheed, you'll hear people joke that we're the company that Dilbert is based on. After a year or two, you'll find out that those people weren't joking. While Lockheed can shower responsibilities and experience on young employees, all promotions are based on years of experience and all raises are based on sucking up to management. This is the sort of company where you could single-handedly win a $25 million contract and be turned down for a promotion because you are 1 month of experience short of the requirement. By the way, that's not hypothetical. In my time at Lockheed, I've seen situations just like that play out... twice! Lockheed is a silo'd company, so it really feels like a loose alliance of hundreds of small-medium companies. It's sort of an interesting place to work, until you realize that all parts of Lockheed fiercely compete with each other. We operate like a pack of wild animals, constantly fighting each other for food, but remaining together for survival. This creates a toxic, ultra-competitive environment where people are rewarded for betraying the guy down the hall because he's from a different part of the company. I've seen people get their yearly raise reduced for helping other parts of the company win new business. The last important thing to know is that they've been making small benefit and quality-of-life cuts every few months for the last ~3 years. They're usually small, but they keep happening like clockwork and they're adding up. I've had multiple raises and a promotion and my total compensation is the same as when I started. In essence, good performance is rewarded with just enough of a raise to keep your salary from shrinking.

Like any big company, you have the politics. They base engineers on "levels" which hardly reflect the true ability and skills. Just because someone has worked in industry for 15 years, does not mean they are a better engineer than someone with 2 years experience. A level 1 could very well be doing the exact job as a level 3 or 4 engineer, but be paid considerably less because of the years of experience and the level they get put at because of this.