Pros
I started here as an engineering intern. I honestly had no idea what would be expected of me when I first interviewed for the position. Right off the bat I was put at ease. The interview process was well laid out and straight forward. I met with three members of the technical staff. What impressed me was the fact that they all started each interview by telling me what they did and how they got started in the business. That really allowed me to relax and focus on what came next. The questions they asked me all involved what I had studied and how I thought I could apply it to a task at the company. They also asked about my other work experience and what I hoped to get from the position. I came away with the belief that even as a very junior person I would be able to make a contribution to the team. I worked for TSC for two summers and one semester as a co-op. After graduation (BSEE) I was happy to receive a full time offer. For the first two years mostly just helped other people on their projects. Most of my tasks involved data collection or analysis. Like most people I had studied MATLAB in school, but I came to learn how useful and sophisticated tool it is in everyday use. Professionally I was lucky to also get exposed to LabView. I participated in a project to help design test stations for avionics systems on advanced Navy aircraft. I feel that it was the best job that I could have taken coming out of school. Now I am a task leader for projects with our Navy customer and learning to develop my people skills. They have sent me to a conference or short course every year after I went full time. That is not as easy for me as the math, but I know it is an important part of the job. The company is employee owned and has an excellent tuition assistance allowance. I am planning on using it to help me get through graduate school. Our office and company went through a number of challenges the last few years. We lost one contract, our operations manager retired and it took a while to get the right person in that job. Change is hard to accept and especially hard for an all employee owned firm where many people had worked together for a long time. But I think it made us better. Other senior people retired all about the same time around the company, so there was a lot of uncertainty because 2013 was such a poor year for us and most government contractors. A year later that has all changed. I am told we finished 2014 back on track with revenue restored. In this industry they measure success by the diversity of the contracts with different customers, revenue earned and how much work there is in backlog. TSC just announced in October (2014) that it has a record high backlog. The new corporate managers started last year by saying that people were the company's most valuable asset. They mean it. In just the last year I have seen emphasis on giving people more authority and responsibility. The CEO has taken interest in recognizing technical accomplishments and rewarding those people who can produce the results we need to be successful.
Cons
Growth opportunities at some offices can be limited depending on the customers at those locations. This is government contract work providing engineering and analysis. If there is a break in a contract you need to be skilled and cross trained to jump on another project, even if only temporary. No one should neglect cross training opporltunities.