Pockets of technical competancy, Understaffed, with consitently unrealistic scheduling. Abusive middle management
Pros
The company is founded by engineers, so in pricniple is an engineering oriented organization. Engineers actually have their won offices and are not relegated to cubicles. Reasonably good benefits if you can hang in there.There are pockets of excellence in the company that can make the work challenging and rewarding, however it is highly dependant on the group you are associated with.
Cons
Many groups are highly political and not open to oustsiders or innovative design approaches. Many extrapolate the success of a handful of organizations and a handful of individuals (e.g the launch of ViaSat's own satellite) to support the belief they are ALL the best and the brightest. Much of the design work I saw was journeyman at best and much of the hardware is based on archaic discrete level design..... cheap and many times effective, but nothing to write home about. Projects are either understaffed or so aggessively scheduled, that the engineering and support staff are expected to make it happen on their own time. Many engineers love their work, so passively submit to this routine, predatory as it is, especially in a tight economy where many live in fear of losing their jobs. This situation takes unfair advantage of the engineer at the very least. The IEEE could learn a few lessons from the AMA in this regard. There is a level of arrogance in the company that is pervasive and counter productive.The arrogance manisfests itself with abusive. ego driven interactions between engineers and an unhealthy lack of cooperation between groups, particularly in different geographic locations, based on an attitude that their particular group is the only one with any brains or competance. My experience with the RF organization in particular is that they are at least 10 years out of date with much of their analysis capabilites, still relying on spreasheets to simulate applications that need more advanced system and hardware analysis. In the Carlsbad facility, they have have not yet begun to understand or appreciate the need for EM simulations for their RF hardware, or advanced Systems spurious analysis where their outdated spreasheets barely scratch the surface. Several of the key middle management are no more than bullies who remain largely and blissfully uninformed or misinformed. I am aware of several engineers who left the organization based on the aggressive and abusive behavior of one manager in particular.