Applied Signal Reviews

Pros

They treat you fairly and defense has been a good area.

Cons

Small company. Not much room for advancement.

Advice to Senior Management

They are doing a good job.

Pros

The technology is cutting edge, but unfortunately mostly classified. The environment is fairly laid back. Many of the people are great to work with. You arguably play a critical role in the security of the United States.

Cons

Career pathing is nearly nonexistent. You have to fight for every single piece of advancement you get, if any at all.

Compensation is wildly inconsistent -- some people are hellaciously overpaid, while others are making unfairly meager wages.

Once a manager, always a manager -- talented people are sometimes let go while ineffective managers survive even when there isn't necessarily a job for them to do.

Lots of deadwood in non-technical areas such as the Finance Division, especially management in Business Operations and Contracts.

The new leadership in Human Resources is a joke and has upset many employees on many different levels.

Advice to Senior Management

Be as objective in evaluating your management as you are in evaluating your costs and ways to cut them. Identify young talent and ensure they have a career path, rather than forcing them to speak up and rattle a cage.

Pros

very flexible, lots of opportunities to work with different languages, good career growth

Cons

Senior management could be better.

Advice to Senior Management

none.

Pros

Most of the employees are great people.
The compensation is at or above average.
The benefits are at or above average.
They try not to overwork you too much.
Tuition reimbursement up to $10k/yr

Cons

The current CEO doesn't exactly maintain a great relationship or reputation with employees.
Constantly cutting back on benefits.
TS SCI clearance required for all positions.

Advice to Senior Management

It would be nice to receive more consistent and regular feedback from managers. Also, the whole management structure makes no sense. The manger who does your performance reviews doesn't necessarily have anything to do with the manager that assigns you tasks.

Pros

- Benefits package is pretty good, especially if you don't have a family
- Some departments are very young (new college grads) so it has a youthful appeal
- Some departments develop and employ leading edge technologies
- Encouraged to take classes to further develop own skills
- Though there is much work to be done, work/life balance ok, as long as you get your work done
- Raise percentages are fairly reasonable

Cons

- Government contractor = DAILY time cards
- Need to be US Citizen to get security clearances (a requirement for engineers)
- Not much knowledge sharing, must learn it on your own
- Can sometimes get pigeon-holed into specific type of work, limiting skills/career growth
- Upper level management does not have good handle on what to focus technical talent on
- In some ways, government contracts up for bid dictate direction of company

Advice to Senior Management

I realize this is a chicken and egg problem, but it would be nice if you hired more engineers so that those employed aren't stuck with an overload of work. I know that the issue is without contracts funding such hires, it's hard to do that. But maybe a little more R&D funding to facilitate that...?

Pros

Environment supports individual and team accomplishments.
Only shared (typically two people) and private office space - hard offices, no cubicals.
Other work environments are labs and SCIFs.
Salaries and benefits, including profit sharing are good.
Contracts awarded where Appsig is the prime do exist and are the best contracts to work.

Cons

Senior management is average at best as they are not very progressive except for the CTO.
Most of the senior management has been with the company over fifteen years, and as such tend not to be open to new ideas from new personnel.
Contracts as a subcontractor with larger prime tend to be dramatically underfunded.

Advice to Senior Management

Company leadership needs to better position the company on bids as a subcontractor, when it chooses to bid on this type of work.

Pros

The job is very stable, and it's a good jumping off point. Most of the engineers here are quite competent.

Cons

Raises are small, as in most govt. contracting/sub-contracting facilities

Advice to Senior Management

Higher raises, faster promotions, more opportunities for entry level engineers

Pros

I have found Applied Signal to be strong when it comes to offering employee training and career advancement. They have routinely allowed me to take the training that I have felt is best for both the company and my own personal benefit. The benefits are still good despite the quality of them being significantly reduced or made more expensive for all employees. The vacation accrual and use policy is also fantastic allowing employees who stay long term the ability to have an incredibly fast vacation accrual rate. On top of this, management has always allowed me to take vacation basically any time I would like to.

Cons

The new CEO is the biggest downside at this current time. He brings with him a style of management that would probably be effective in a small start-up (which is where he last came from) but does not translate well at all to a larger established company. He wants to micromanage almost everything possible including deciding on which employees who worthy of raises and those who are not even the employees who does not know (which is most of them). He's made a number of questionable changes to company policy and a wide range of benefits that is simply going to make it more difficult to attract quality employees which the company needs very badly.

To summarize the downside to the new CEO, he pushes a style of management in which no one is trusted. His actions speak as though only he can make proper decisions and steals away authority away from lower level management.

Advice to Senior Management

Drop the new CEO. We can find better.

Pros

It has the best benefits I've ever had. Also, the culture is one of trust that people will do the right thing and solve the problems they are asked to solve. Engineers are allowed to do what they want think is right.

Cons

Focus is more on individual effort than team performance and team synergy. Being allowed to do what you think is best is great when you're right and frustrating when help and support is needed. We solve hard problems and sometimes more people working together would get things done faster.

Advice to Senior Management

People need more recognition - not just the percieved superstars.

Pros

The technology is really on the leading edge. There are a lot of extremely smart engineers and scientists working in the company, and they freely share their expertise with everyone, without any attitude. There is plenty of in house training, as well as team mentors. People here are fun, real, and interesting to work with, and I feel that it is a great place to hone my engineering and leadership skills. If I ever get tired of working here, I'll be able to go anywhere.

Cons

There is no effort or awareness from the company to explore being greener, or reducing the corporate carbon footprint.

Advice to Senior Management

Reign in the board of directors and ask them why in the midst of cutting corporate overhead (by looking at reducing benefits,) they gave themselves a significant raise.