Where to begin....
-I was hired fresh out of college as an industrial engineer. I was told the position would be more oriented towards lean manufacturing and support. Currently, I run reports and make charts that track how production is progressing rather than actually help production be more efficient. In short, we produce reports, management looks at reports and yells at lower levels to do better. It's abusive and a complete waste of talent. I'm an engineer being paid an ok salary to click buttons.
-Old and Slow. Business has been slow the past few years and Aerospace Systems continually has been cutting investment. I've never seen a company rely so much on people and machines and then unwillingly invest in them. We literally run machines 24/7 in order to meet schedule, neglect preventative maintenance and when they catastrophically fail, wonder what happened. The same is true of employees.
-No training, expectation of perfection. I received about an hours worth of training my first day from a co-worker who had been there 30 years and acted as if I was imposing on their time. People are busy, but lacking any formal training or investment in people is egregious. Worse, it's just sad when management fails to give you that training and expects your work to be perfect on the first go. Further, people don't help until their butt is on the line. Otherwise, you tend to be on your own.
-Huge age gap. Aerospace has been struggling lately and has held onto many tenured employees, while laying off less tenured ones. They then hire in new graduates to back fill a 30+ year employee. I have no problem against older employees, but when you're the only 20 something in a group...you know there's something wrong. To compound that, the company is bleeding younger folks. Most 20 somethings I've met in the company are looking for other jobs outside of Northrop.
-I feel bad for my managers. Management works about 60+ hours per week, constantly on their blackberry or responding to e-mails. They don't have time to mentor or even meet with employees on a regular basis. Adding to that fact, most of them don't know how to manage. On a regular basis I watch managers berate employees. They ask for turn around times on tasks that are rather impossible and then insult employees when they can't meet those expectations.
-Raises. I received a 2% raise my first year. This is barely in line with inflation and laughable at best. I've met many folks who've come out of retirement to assist Northrop from "the glory days" and they are some of the best and brightest people I've ever met. The company has retired them, cut salaries and recruited cheaper, but less adequate managers whom can't manage and are generally miserable people.
-Old facilities. My workplace has not been touch in 20+ years. The carpet is old and stained, computers are slow and the floors are peeling up. The companies attitude shows in its neglected and antiquated buildings.
