Pros
Gulfstream's upper echelon is excellent. The CIO is supreme, and her performance continues to inspire me.
Cons
GS takes the maintenance approach to excellence. Short signed decisions over the decades have put IT in a very tough situation. People, processes, technology, and data are wrapped around profit centers. This strategy creates duplication, drives up cost, and forces people to make bad architectural decisions. Lower managers do not think strategically, their job could be automated. Managers have very little power to do what they think is right. Culture overpowers logic. The only religion is status quo. I lost count of the amount of times my ideas where simply shot down without exploration. Gulfstream is not conducive to innovation; TMT would disagree, but there are no mechanisms to report on ideas that were killed before they were even known. I also lost count of the times I was told "We just don't do it that way", or "that's just the way it works ... ". If you want a democratic environment were people love new ideas, then do not work here. However, if you love the daily grind, maintenance for excellence strategy, then please apply. At the CIO altitude, successes are easy to measure. However, the operational managers are inexperienced, and make isolated vertical decisions. There is a middle management that is ready to retire, and they do not have the stomach to suggest a multi-million dollar projects. We have reached a carrying capacity for cost/performance, and no-one wants to say it, but 'The house is already burned down, we need to rebuild.'
