Pros
Large company with numerous large and small programs. Lots of room for lateral movement between programs. This company is absolutely what you make of it. No one will speak for you, or hand you opportunities; a lot of young engineers take too long to realize that. Ask for more work, turn it around quickly, and you then proceed to tell management just how great you did, you'll be set. Rotations exist within programs: ask for them. Get experience, get informed: move up in rank/responsibility. Yearly performance reviews are great, and they give you an opportunity to make your work visible to management. You essentially have to sell yourself (and your work)to them, and justify why you should be rewarded. The peer-based performance review cycle helps with this, but you still need to heavily self advocate; be brash, be confident, and dictate your career. Education benefits are great, granted the department has funding (which they usually do). This is capped at $10k per year, per individual, with some exceptions and extra programs which extend this. Work-life balance can be great, depending on your program and how you yourself work. Hours are generally flexible within the 9/80 work week. Some people come in as late as 12PM, others as early as 6AM.
Cons
Lots of engineers just treading water, because it's simply easy to get stuck doing that. Just turning the crank and never improving can be big within the systems engineering departments, and sometimes management encourages this. Salary can sometimes be lower than competitors, and certainly is lower than the private sector (as expected). Nevertheless, Raytheon has some of the best engineers, and you can certainly learn a lot from any time spent here.
