Poor culture for outgoing individuals, excellent opportunities for growth
Pros
Coworkers tend to have tons of experience and know how with their work. I am very young (started here right out of my undergraduate degree) and have generally felt I've been surrounded by very intelligent people. The people you're surrounded with are generally very helpful, when they choose to be, and are good individuals. It's been heavily emphasized from the get-go that I need to get an advanced degree to move up. If you get plugged in with the right group of people, i can easily see this place being a wonderful place to work. The atmosphere is pretty cut throat, and is inspiring if you have the drive to succeed. If you have a lot of independent drive, you will build a network that will help you reach success. You need to be willing to put yourself out there (and risk falling flat on your face) to grow, which is challenging but is good. Need to consistently seek out opportunities. I generally feel in control of what I get to work on. Taking time off work is almost NEVER a problem as long as you flex your hours, use PTO, and complete work on time - a flexible schedule is absolutely wonderful, not to mention every other Friday off! Benefits are great too.
Cons
The people are generally nice and helpful, but most of all keep to themselves with their work and socially. Relationships at work aren't ever really built up and business is the primary driver (which can be good and bad, but I think a little more balance would be good). The culture is what would be expected at any engineering company - a lot of the people are very very reserved when engaging at meetings or communicating with each other which makes understanding what to do very difficult. Unless directed so by someone higher than them, more often than not people would come off as reluctant to help. Middle management is pretty awful at guiding new hires in their jobs, they just expect you to sink or swim. There is a massive gap in knowledge between new hires and most of the existing employees, with a culture that seemingly suppresses any attempt to eliminate this great divide. Also, the structure for performance reviews is awful and is set up to fail unless you devote a significant amount of time 'bragging' to your superior about your accomplishments; you'd think such a large, successful corporation would have a more defined performance evaluation cycle in place that would lead people to success. Often times I can see people getting in a rut if they don't actively communicate work to their functional supervisors, and easily getting complacent with what they do. The program I am on is rife with politics which aggravates the hell out of me, but I've heard it's not as bad as other companies.
