BAE SYSTEMS (United Kingdom) Reviews

Pros

high integrity - the company goes the distance when it comes to training their emplyees in correct business behavior and fosters proper ethics and morality at all times. The company provides excellent good benefits, including health, dental, vision insurance, ample vacation and holidays (including a week off at yar end), flexible work scheduling and a 9 day work schedule that gives alternate Friday's off! The environment is clean, the cafe services are excellent, convenient and inexpensive and the atmosphere is friendly. The motivated engineer will find occasional exposure to state of the art technical work.

Cons

management undervalues technical expertise; process/programatics orientation as well as a "play-it-safe" policy (which discourages low disruptive influences, including beneficial disruption of the stagnant base) dominates the ascension chain, which seeks to preserve the status quo rather than ambitiously advance it.

Advice to Senior Management

incorporate into upper management individuals that have proven technical skills and who have demonstrated the abilty to combine those skills with leadership and business (e.g. customer) skills.

Pros

Good pay and benefits. Stable company with a favorable outlook, at least in the near future. Company does not expect salaried employees to work excessive amounts of overtime (good work/life balance). Employees are treated with respect, for the most part. Very charitable company that is a respected member of the local community.

Cons

Management does not communicate well (except superficially) with employees. Good old boy network alive and well. If you are salaried you will, most likely, have to interface with union employees on a regular basis which, at this company, can be extremely frustrating. Training at this company has been poor.

Advice to Senior Management

Take a more hands on approach

Pros

You could not show up and it wouldn't be noticed...and you could still get paid. Easy to bond with other disillusioned employees. There is some real talent, but not recognized and appreciated. Best to find an "insider" early on who knows the ins and outs.

Cons

No direction. Everyone off doing their own thing. Kepp quiet, stay low and out of the line of fire. Unhappy customers calling ALL THE TIME. No jeans allowed., except "neatly pressed" ones the first Friday of the month. Promised an office, I sat in a dirty cubicle that had been used for storage. No office supplies, I bought my own and co-workers stole them. I left after 90 days, just ahead of layoffs.

Advice to Senior Management

Get in touch. Participate. Be part of the solution and not the problem. Why do you think you should be promoted up and not your employees?

Pros

Stability and pretty good pay, plus interesting work. I think that I work with lots of interesting people who are smart and hard workers. The division that I work in does lots of interesting research projects which are sponsored by DARPA. This is exciting work which keeps me engaged. I like the management. They seem to be actively pushing the envelope when it comes to management. Expectations are clearly communicated and my yearly goals are usually in line with general performance excellence. I like that we hire lots of women ( where lots is a few ... but this is the engineering field).

Cons

Don't like current ethics trial. Its an embarassment. We do work a lot of hours from time to time. It would really help if I had a PhD. Sometimes a technical solution is dictated by management for marketing reasons. One problem is that if someone is not performing then its hard to fire them. The corporate parent is really afraid of turnover. They want you to give someone every chance to turn it around before pushing them out. I myself don't really believe in that so I see it as a drawback. Sometimes people are nitwits, but I think you see that in any job.

Advice to Senior Management

Keep it up.

Pros

They give you the ability to move around within the company. They post internal jobs for their employees, and if at some point you want to move up the ladder, it's easier to do so without having to leave your company.

Cons

They are in the middle of a corporate wide IT restructure, and as such their departments are in a mess right now. Also, they give out bogus titles to their employee's. Instead of going with industry standards, they let job titles come to them in a dream. Most people don't care about this sort of thing, but it could be something that hurts your resume at some other point in time.

On another note, if you don't like to travel, stay away from this company, because being in the IT department, EIT, or BAE-IT, you will be on travel. I don't mind it, as I get to see places I've never seen or thought I would get to see.

Advice to Senior Management

Stop handing out three-four word titles that make no sense, and as always listen to your engineers. When you are an engineer, and your title gets changed to "administrator" it's degrading.

Pros

The work is state of the art technology with a diversified product line. Employees are friendly toward each other and for the most part are willing to help others. After the first year employees get two weeks vacation as well as a week off between Christmas and New Years.

Cons

Too much overtime without compensation. Management typically underquotes work by taking risky approaches to solutions. It is the employee who assumes the risk when the job becomes over budget and behind schedule by being forced to work substantial uncompensated overtime. In the past, an employee could take time off for past uncompensated overtime. Under the current organization this is no longer possible.

Advice to Senior Management

Quote new work realistically and stop forcing employees to work uncompensated overtime to make up for poor assumptions. Quit the semi-annual reorganizations your making us look stupid.

Pros

BAE is fair and pays a competative salary and moving jobs within the company is easy and reasonable

Cons

I think intelligence analyst working with other companies might get paid better

Advice to Senior Management

to be more involved at the customer location

Pros

Good pay and secure job, while you are on a contract.

Cons

When my contract is up I wont have a job

Advice to Senior Management

Build loyalty by growing your workforce, promoting your workforce. Keep your people beyond the contract.

Pros

BAE is a pretty big company and though my position was boring and probably had little promotion potential, I doubt the entire company is that way. I enjoyed the trips to Cape Canaveral, but that was about it.

Cons

My job in particular was boring, had little to do with my career, or any future job, and thus the "skills" I learned while working there were pretty useless.

Advice to Senior Management

I can't remember all the senior manager's names, but their big mistake was announcing a RIF, and not being specific about who it would effect. I got on the phone with some connections and was out of there pronto even though it turns out no engineers would be laid off. Oh well, better they waste their money training a new employee than I waste my time in the unemployment line.

Pros

Laid back environment, Knowledgeable employees, Lots of time off

Cons

Projects always behind schedule and over-budget, Management doesn't seem to know what they're doing half the time. There is a huge age gap between employees. Most engineers are over 40 and out of shape. Because they've been doing their job so long they aren't open to new and fresh ideas of some newer employees.

Advice to Senior Management

Try and have better project for entry-level people to work on. Encourage more openness to ideas, because if you keep running your business this way you will be obsolete within 10 years.