Raytheon reviews

Low pay and does not keep up with competitors

Defense/aerospace = bloated process, largely imposed by government. That means filing 500 pages of paperwork for every line of code you get to write. The upside is that you actually feel safe with safety-critical products. If I had my way, I'd rather have Raytheon design a self-driving car than Google. :) But this level of process is taxing and not for everyone. I've seen many coworkers flee to the FAANG companies because of it. Corporate is also slow to approve helpful tools (especially FOSS) to be installed on company assets and will have programmers use outdated clunky tools (such as ancient IDEs/editors or ClearCase) instead. It can make coding a real bear. :( Promotions are not (solely) based on merit. It's time put in, regardless of how good you are. You will definitely earn less than your peers at a FAANG company, but since I have had a very short commute during my career here I can't complain. Also, you have to take into account work-life balance vs. some teams on a FAANG. When you finally do start getting promoted here, that's when they decide you might be too old (i.e., expensive) and choose you for being laid off when the project ends. It's sad to see older coworkers treated like this. On the other hand, they have been good with giving voluntary lay-off packages lately. Sometimes when contracts are thin, losing your job is inevitable. But if you are good you might very well be one of the ones they keep. Sadly, it can be a bit like musical chairs. Get caught without a project, and they won't replace a lazy or mediocre employee who still has a project with the good employee. They'll just lay off the good employee. But I know they try to keep good employees overall. I do wish they'd offer more incentives to stay vs. go to a FAANG. Loyalty to the company doesn't seem to matter much to them. I chose to stay and I sometimes wonder why (other than the short commute I've enjoyed). On the other hand, the grass is always greener on the other side, and overall I'm content. I've seen coworkers hop around to Lockheed and so forth, and they often find themselves unhappy for it. I think that's shown me to be happy where I'm at. Many of us are upset at the CEO's forcing employees to be vaxxed or axed (unless they get a religious/medical exemption). They have been good at approving religious exemptions without a fight, but you will be stigmatized for it by being forced to wear a mask onsite and submit to regular testing before going onsite. In spite of the government backing off on forcing the vax on contractors, the CEO is still buckling down. I feel bad for anyone trying to apply for a job here who is unvaxxed. I'm betting they won't get hired even with an exemption.