Cubic Senior Systems Engineer reviews

4.3

80% would recommend to a friend

(8 total reviews)

Stevan Slijepcevic

16% approve of CEO

99% positive business outlook

Reviews by job title

8 reviews
3.0
Sep 17, 2014
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

Long term project involving complex systems integration, with broad exposure to business areas that include both engineering, operational services, and project/program management.

Cons

The local Australian business is relatively young, having been set up initially for the project bid and scaled up once the the project was awarded. Therefore local conditions are somewhat turbulent without the stability and richness of working conditions of the more established businesses in US and UK.

3.0
Sep 4, 2008
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

Everyone agrees cities need more public transit. CTS does exactly that, by providing the means to funding public transit. That means the current systems are maintained, and justifies expanding older systems. Cubic is a great company for the neophyte or the old fox. The neophyte will get lots of learning opportunities about technical matters, office politics, and the dirtier side of engineering. The old fox gets good benefits, and only needs COLA raises. There are quite a few superb people, especially on the technical side. On the management side, you've gotta appreciate them for their Machiavellian nature and flexible moral fiber.

Cons

For the technical person who's been there awhile, you'll get small raises, and work on LOTS of legacy systems. CTS has been putting in systems for over 30 years, and if you've been there awhile, you'll get to work on some of these that were cutting edge-- 10 to 20 years ago. Most new proposals are done as "This is the same as [insert previous project]!" and budgeted accordingly. No time is given to doing in depth estimates beforehand. Customers demand all-inclusive fixed-price bids, so when the work actually comes in the door, you're almost guaranteed to lose money. I've worked on a number of projects where it was sold at a loss-- so we're told-- "come up with some cost savings, we're 5 million in the hole!"-- and we hear this in the kickoff meeting! PM's are encouraged to save money, often at the expense of the company. If there's a way to come up with a bubblegum and baling wire design that'll only work this one time, they'll do it. And then it'll be sold to another project with no additional engineering time, guaranteeing problems for the next project.

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