Stay away from the NPD Mechanical Engineering Group.
Pros
Benefits are good, offices are bright and filled with daylight. The designs and equipment you get to work on there are mechanism intense and embody multiple technologies which is an engineer or designers dream job.
Cons
The very best mechanical engineers I've worked with have all left Entrust Datacard because of the bad management. Making A3's, goals, and career development plans have taken the place of doing great engineering work. Half of your performance evaluation is now based on meeting the "Datacard Values". Twice a year you will be required to do a self review and report on your progress toward your managers goals which have become your goals. The whole place stops for a couple of weeks while everyone scurries around doing their review and trying to meet some stupid goals that have nothing to do with the schedule at hand, like making a minimum number of A3's each quarter. In order to survive there you have to be able to blow a lot of smoke up the chain. It's not what you do, it's how you do it that counts.
