Not a High Tech Company - Not an Employee Friendly Company!
Pros
False sense of security that comes from being in a large corporation. Benefits and 401K match generally good but benefits keep getting more expensive and covers less. Facilities are very nice and with lots of effort you can wrestle capital dollars out for your projects. Have some good opportunities for students and interns.
Cons
Employees are as disposable as paper towels! I've witnessed age and disability discrimination aimed at people of all levels and tenure. Company periodically does layoffs while advertising for similar jobs. Management competence may be the worst in the USA! Constantly putting people in high level technical management positions who have no technical training or experience. Company is a caricature of all that is wrong with corporate America in the 21st century - quarterly meetings to tell employees of record profits, while last 3 years average raises were - 0.5%, 0%, & 1.0%!! Attrition at my location is about 20% a year and senior, well trained folks are replaced with junior level (aka CHEAP) workers if they are replaced at all! Product quality and margin drop year over year and there is no connection for management between staff competence and project success. The CEO is one of the highest paid in the world while this is not one of the most profitable companies in the world. The upper management ranks are staffed with those that went to school with the CEO (and not a good school!), and equity is only doled out to those in the "Club". Most mid and low level managers have no equity at all. The company makes acquisitions and after a couple of years drives off the valuable employees (who often go to start competitors) squeezes who is left, drops quality, kills margin, and eventually shuts the doors! The company strives to be listed as a highly desirable employee but the work experience is so spotty across the company that for everyone who is happy, there are ten who aren't. Company expounds on "4 I" values while management embraces none of them in their practices. Management puts lots of barriers up for getting work done such as giving little authority to individual location managers as exemplified by the ridiculously low dollar value of signature authority. Most decisions and large purchases have to be run through headquarters. While capital is tightly regulated, expenses are not. The corporation is very reluctant to invest capital in existing businesses and is much more attracted to acquisitions. This is a very hard, cold, unappreciative, unrewarding place to work where few think their future will be better!
