Pros

ATK is a great place to work for those who want to be agressive with their career and who want all the pro's and con's of increasing responsibility. There is visibility up to high level management for those who are considered top talent.

Cons

ATK has grown by acquisition and as such many of its business systems, processes and leaders function in silo's. This is being addressed, but it is slow at times. In order for ATK to move to the next level and regularly compete with the primes - business efficiencies need to be made. ATK is also at a crossroads with their brand identity.

Advice to Senior Management

There needs to be a stronger Enterprise presence. Too often groups are allowed to operate on their own rather than having Corporate drive and enforce common policies and practices.

Pros

Good benefits. Good experiences. Close to home

Cons

Lots and lots of layoffs. People are very competitive to keep their jobs. So much worry, that nothing gets done.

Advice to Senior Management

Don't be scared of doing things a new way. Could benefit the company greatly

Pros

The work is extremely important and you feel very proud of what you accomplish. Assignments are decently challenging and young engineers are given a lot of responsibility.

Cons

Location is absolutely terrible with 7am start time. 1+ hour commute from ogden, so you need to be out the door by 6am everyday. There is a lot of red tape and a long chain of command so even minute design changes can take weeks to get approval. A lot of pressure on young engineers to produce results.

Advice to Senior Management

Assist young engineers in acclimating to new heavy responsibility. Move to a 9-80 or 4-40 schedule to alleviate commute time.

Pros

Work was interesting, challenging and relevant. Local management extremely flexible with schedules as long as work got completed, and the local team was always willing to help as needed. Severance package was more than fair.

Cons

ATK seemed to have a new business plan of buying up smaller companies, keeping the pieces they wanted and discarding the rest through closing divisions.

Advice to Senior Management

Before looking outside the company to do sub-contracts, look to what capabilities are within companies that you have recently bought. Keeping work in the company will not only save money but will also save employee morale.

Pros

I would say the best reason to work at ATK is skill development. They encourage and pay for continuing education. The design engineering position itself is very technical, and you are exposed to a number of competent people who are willing to teach you about the ins and outs of rocket science. It's also a great place to learn how to deal with bureaucracy. That's pretty common in every company, and it's interesting to watch and learn at ATK.

Cons

At promontory, the commute is terrible. With 50 miles to the nearest well established town, it puts a lot of wear and tear on your vehicle. The company is top heavy, much like other companies. They put far too much emphasis on lean manufacturing for a company that builds the world's largest rocket motor and spends at least half its budget on paperwork. It's unfortunate that upper management at Launch Systems hasn't worked on obtaining more contracts, leading to massive layoffs. One of the biggest complaints, though, is that the company is so focused on safety, oversight, and standardization that it has all but paralyzed itself. It takes nine signatures to get a technician to test a piece of plastic. That kind of thing slows down productivity.

Also, it would be nice to work at a place where the management is hired for their ability to manage people. I've seen people with excellent managerial skills get passed up for someone with seniority, but no management skills. The place may be more efficiently run if there was more emphasis on business development and less on paperwork.

Advice to Senior Management

See cons.

Pros

A lot of hands on work . There is a lot of work with NASA and space systems, having a hand in human spaceflight is very exciting. There is a very intelligent and competent engineering community with a lot of experience. The company has had a very extensive history of innovation.

Cons

Lots of corporate red tape, as with any defense contractor that deals with DoD. Paperwork is needed for everything. Some communications issues with upper management- information is sometimes passed up to them in the forms of hearsay and rumors.

Advice to Senior Management

Trust your direct reports to supply you with accurate information.

Pros

They have a wide range of opportunities available on different product lines. They pay well and being dependent on government contracts keeps the jobs stable. Their is relatively low turnover.

Cons

The facilities are very old and somewhat depressing. The greatest drawback was the lack of coordination. I never saw my supervisor so I received no feedback. Without feedback there was no real opportunity for promotion.

Advice to Senior Management

Coordinate more effectively with your staff!

Pros

The very best reasons to work for ATK is that you are absolutely in love with rockets, carbon fiber, resin compounds, cork, fiberglass, and propulsion systems OR that you are a smoking hot logistics and supply specialist. If you are into that, then ATK is a great place for you. ATK's Quality Department was top notch from what I could tell. The internal audit system is very robust, and well-maintained. There is plenty of opportunity for someone who wants an education, especially if you are interested in logistics and supply functions. Judging from the clothes that manager-types wear, I'm gonna guess that the compensation is really good at that level. And as a mid-career technical writer, I think the pay was slightly higher than I would have found elsewhere. From a jobby-job standpoint, it's pretty good. I was always able to balance my work vs. play time without any trouble. When I was there, corporate had capped overtime, so it was rare that I worked a 50 hour week. The production schedule is mapped out pretty far in advance, so you can get a vacation in when you want it. Since they do a lot of government contracting, there's a bit of a government job feel to the place, especially when it comes to procuring supplies for your department. Of course, the IT guys are always spying on your e-mail and web-surfing, but nobody is gonna freak out if you jump on facebook during lunch.

Cons

If you are making widgets that sell for a quarter, and you mess one up, you just chuck it in the re-work bin and move on. However, when your product sells for a quarter-million or better, and you mess one up, some heads are going to roll. This fact seems to have caused an unfortunate and ugly culture to develop at ATK, in which every single person involved in the manufacture of said product is in constant CYA mode. You will sit through lots of very uncomfortable meetings in which engineers and project managers try to slough blame on the production workers, and vice-versa. In order to last there, you need to get good at nasty politics. Fear of blame also sets up an "us vs. them" conflict between engineering and production, and everybody knows that's going to hurt your production time.

Advice to Senior Management

Ask the question "What is to blame?" rather than "Who is to blame?" That is the only way to foster teamwork and loyalty among your employees.

Pros

The work is fun and interesting. The envionrment is very friendly and relaxed, but at the same time focused on delivering quality products to the customer. It is very easy to balance work and life as scheduling is pretty flexible.

Cons

Satisfaction and experiences seem too tightly tied to your manager and workgroup. Seems the old timer managers are preferred and that non-production/manufacturing groups are, too.
There have been a lot of recent changes in upper management, which has a tendency to make peopler nervous.
Benefits are about average for today's market.
There are always rumors of layoffs on the horizon, but I guess that is a downside of working for a company that is so heavily dependent on the government and politics.

Advice to Senior Management

Keep a careful eye on your middle management and that will let you know how well your employees like working there

Pros

It's a solid company with opportunity

Cons

They work like a beauacracy and getting management to listen to you can be difficult. They are also and older company and change doesn't come very easily

Advice to Senior Management

Learn to adapt to the new models in the industry or you'll be left in the dust and become a dinosaur.