Compensation - seems a little bit low for Software Engineers compared to places like Google and Microsoft. Our bonuses are very small and we get no equity.
Advancement - mostly seniority based since there are a lot of old-timers who have been with the company for a long time. Flat hierarchy reduces number of management or leadership type of positions.
Incentives - monetary incentives to work harder and to be innovative are very weak and almost laughable. No stock options and only the upper levels of management get meaningful bonuses.
Bureaucracy - lots of politics and brown nosing depending on which projects you work on. This is unavoidable in a very large company like Raytheon.
Education - internal training focuses on process, government regulation, and ethics. Raytheon seems to be behind the curve on advancements in cutting edge technology. Change comes about slowly in a large defense company. Also, they don't have very good benefits for helping you get advanced degrees.
Skills - many people suffer from loss of skills in the technical field. Some people get stuck working with proprietary programming languages that hinders their ability to get a job at another company. However, the brightest people usually get to work with the more difficult, and more marketable, programming languages. It is also easy to get stuck working on a multi-year, even decades long, project where your skill set can become out-dated.
