Space Micro reviews

We are working to design some high end RF devices but we arent really allowed to do our work properly. One manager here (who has never designed a radio ever) makes arbitrary design decisions that make no sense. Then its up to us engineers to somehow make these things work. One guy got so upset that he put his fist through a wall in our of our hallways (the company put a sign up in front of it so no one would see the hole). The schedules and organization is ridiculous. We are working our tails off to meet some deadline in the next few weeks, and none of us engineers think its even possible. And management just doesnt want to hear what we have to say. At least they are paying us overtime, but its kind of a waste seeing that the dealine is pretty much impossible.

Management is not very good here. Very little planning, everything seems to happen in some type of "emergency mode" instead of actually being planned, thought out, and organized. It seems like the owners don't think that such stuff is important. We had one manager that was pretty good at all that stuff, but they got rid of him. Since then, we feel like there is no one that really knows how to run stuff and do things the right way and allow us to do good work. None of us (at least the engineers) got a raise last year because the company is losing money. That's not the engineers' fault, the problem is that the projects are all bid and sold at really low prices and with schedules that make no sense. It seems like whoever is doing that really does not understand how tough and complicated these projects are. So we have to work like crazy, don't get overtime, don't get raises, to somehow make up for the fact that management screwed up. We get very little feedback from managers in general. Certainly not much positive feedback anymore. When we do get feedback its negative, or we are told we are taking too long or not working enough hours. But again, the problem is that the owners have no clue just how complicated it is to do these types of boards. My last review (last fall in 2011) was a joke. I had one about a year before (fall 2010) and that was pretty good. The guy who did it actually knew what I had done, and we got to talk for like 2 hours. The guy listened to what I had to say, asked me what I wanted to do, what we could do better, and how I might like to help. He told me ways that I could improve, but he was pretty fair about it I guess. The review I had last fall was different. It was a joke. The guy who did it had little clue about what I do, what I did, and what I wanted to do. Plus he didn't seem to care. He sat me down and said what he had to say, and after that, he was done. It was more like him just telling me how he thought I did (but again, he really didn't know) and he really didn't care what I had to say at all. I would like to give more info but I probably shouldn't. The company is pretty small (like 40 people) and if I give too much detail, they will probably figure out who I am!