There is no a good communication between management and engineers. I have been on teams where nobody explains what we are supposed to do. They expected us to spontaneously figure it out, and consequently so much time gets wastes.
You will not be given to do any interesting work at Raytheon. They are not innovative at all. They take complete algorithms from program A and use in program B. So, there is no real engineering work and you will forget skills gained before joining RMS. Management is way corrupted, so political and unfair to engineers who do real work. They award only individuals who are their friends and whose votes they can count on. After years of engineering experience and so many companies, I can fairly say that Raytheon missile systems is the worst company if you are achievement driven engineer. All managers at RMS are failed engineers.
Buddy system provides you good performance reviews although you can do almost nothing. If you are a friend with whoever makes decision, know the decisions will be in your favor. We all knew people who spent half a day at work and charged as full shift which is 9 hours without including breakfast/lunch. Some employees at RMS just go to work to socialize. It is hard to believe but there are so many people that literally do nothing all day long. Retired veterans, who are there to help win contract, do nothing. They just go around and talk to each other. They are so clannish.
It is impossible to move from one group to another unless you kiss your boss’ ass every day. But again, if you are a friend with your section head, you can move easily and work on different projects, or join groups/departments that have more money. I was not a buddy with my section head and my requests to move to different group and work on more interesting assignments were not approved although he kept promising. During that time, I witnessed 4 people moving to other departments/groups although they had fewer skills for such jobs in comparing to me.
The environment can get so bureaucratic with endless meetings where nothing is decided, just all time changing visions of the upper management are explained over and over.
Upper management do not even know that you exist. My department head so far exchanged 2 sentences with me for almost 5 years. Two of his predecessors, neither me nor a bunch of other engineers ever met in person.
You will know a bunch of people who do almost nothing, never designed anything and do not want to stick their noses in C++ to figure out something hard. But again, they are friends with the managers.
Office space is the smallest I have ever had in any engineering company. Closed are labs are so noisy and ice refrigerated. You have to wear jacket and ear-plugs all the time. You can complain but nobody does anything about. I gave up after a month. Salary raise is 2%. If you are a friend of managers, they will favor you beacause they give promotions to people who would support them politically. In such case, salary raise is 2.2%.
