Boeing reviews

In the tough times of the past few years, it has become policy to justify lower raises and lack of promotion by intentionally rating employees lower in their performance reviews. The charge number system, so common in aerospace companies, discourages employees from cooperating with each other and stifles innovation. Years of short-sighted decision making has left the company sluggish, overpriced, and unresponsive to customer needs. They talk endlessly about cross-training and eliminating single-point failures, but in practice, they don't do much to make it happen. With all the ups and downs in the satellite business, it has become accepted that you have to constantly sleep with your resume under your pillow, and watch your work jealously. It leads to a lot of pettiness. Management responds to bad feedback by suggesting that it is due to their failure to communicate properly how wonderful they are. Managers aren't there to enable their employees to get the job done. Instead, they use their employees to win the buzzword bingo game on their resume, prioritizing inconsequential tasks that have buzzwords, while leaving employees to fend for themselves on the important tasks. In other words, they're managing upside down. Every manager's full time job is to look good to the manager above them and, therefore, to make them look good, in the short term. Processes seem designed to increase cost and decrease productivity. The company is very much geared towards "systems engineers". Other disciplines are sometimes not considered with as much respect or consideration.

Poor equipment, pay is less than other software companies, management knows nothing about IT all the way up the chain. Finance drives everything. Things are no longer built in house, everything is pushed to buy from typically Microsoft or other large vendors (even when it makes no financial sense). If you like working in a call center, all IT employees are being put into those desks and environment. Cram as many people into 5x5 "cubes" with no walls so you have to hear everyone on the phone and have no place to put your stuff. Yet they still can't afford to give us free drip coffee. The mass exodus started years ago when the company began to push away from the west coast with recurring layoffs every 6 months trying to get everyone to St Louis. Good employees leave quickly after seeing the bureaucracy and the fact that MBAs and PHDs are paid poorly and don't get promotions just like everyone else. Talent doesn't warrant promotions either and they don't happen since the overall budget is still in a freeze. No upward mobility (especially for those in senior positions like myself). As the economy has improved, Boeing posts higher profits, and the overall IT industry grows - Boeing tells it's employees they're overpaid, need to cut back, should be happy for what they have, and that the west coast isn't worth having programmers.