Boeing Reviews

Pros

-Good benefits still even though they are cutting everything
- If you get a good manager you can move around to other areas
- Has lots of upcoming projects

Cons

- Boring work you do not get much opportunity to develop
- Management is really terrible

Pros

Company has funds for new technology and processes. Most of the employees are professional and hard working, however some (including managers) are petty. This is no different from other large organizations. Benefits are great even with phase out of pension for new employees. 401K has excellent match. Medical is great. Salaries are average for non-managers. Working conditions are excellent at my site.

Cons

Unless you are anointed, advancement can be very slow. Factors other than merit guide assignments to challenging work. Most people are little cogs in a big organizational machine. Processes and methods are very company specific and may not be transferable. Unless you are in St of Washington, need to be able to move for advancement.

Pros

Solid benefits, good salary. I know there are layoffs from time to time, but they do really try to protect their employees. General not a bad work environment.

Cons

It is not unusual to see people promoted based on who you know, or simply being female, being a minority so quotas can be met rather than promoting based on skill and ability. I have seen several programs fail because of people promoted beyond their abilities. As others have said, it really does help to know an M level manager, or better yet an E. It is also not unusual to see employees perform well below what they should be and nothing is done about it.

Advice to Senior Management

Many managers could benefit from more training, or mentoring from more successful managers. Some really have poor decision making skills and poor people skills.

Pros

Good pay and exposure to really interesting things. Potential for growth in the aerospace field. There are great benefits which is also a plus.

Cons

The company is too big to be run efficiently. I find that much of my day is spent waiting for emails. I thought I was joining a cutting edge team, but was disappointed to find that I am pushing papers around all day.

Advice to Senior Management

Please pay attention to your new graduate employees. There needs to be a new hire program that will ensure new employees meet the people they want to be friends with.

Pros

Great people, you earn what you put in. Having Boeing as a starting company is a dream come true, however I do not see a long future for myself here as other companies pay higher for what I do.

Cons

Sometimes lacking in directions. Not having a strong sense of cohesiveness. Extremely slow in getting anything done a.k.a there is a ton of bureaucracy

Advice to Senior Management

I really don't have any advice for management as I've come to realize that with a company of this size, the shortcomings of the company cannot be changed without monumental effort.

Pros

Excellent aerospace company leader in field

Cons

Big company, sometimes too easy to get lost in the crowd. Too focused on certain technologies. Need more of the human element.

Pros

You get to work in a huge company - looks good on your resume. Company is doing well and the future outlook looks really good

Cons

There's a lot of old people working there. People that have been working at Boeing for 30, 40 years. Makes for somewhat of a big culture difference.

Advice to Senior Management

Management needs to allow their employees to be promoted. Also benefits should be made better. Theres a lot of bureaucracy as well

Pros

Amazing benefits, training and learning opportunities, diverse range of work available, schedule flexibility, telecommuting option, good work / life balance.

Cons

Salary is below market value, managers lacking proper leadership skills, high praise but low raise, too much bureaucracy, culture is restrictive of change and progressive innovation.

Advice to Senior Management

When moving a technical person into a management position, be sure they have proper leadership skills. This will make or break your team. Dealt with too many under-qualified managers. Manager performance reviews should include reviews from subordinates.

Pros

-Great Benefits
-Cool Products
-Smart people
-Easy going pace

Cons

-Very large: small fish in a big sea
-Promotion process is terrible
-To much old fashioned conservative thinking
-young employees are not assigned meaningful work

Advice to Senior Management

Stop pushing lean propaganda as a means to bump yourself up. Modify and enhance the promotion process. Get rid of the forced performance distribution.

Pros

I haven't looked into other jobs very seriously from what research I did, Boeing's salary is at or above other salaries. But, what puts them above the others is the benefits package--401k, pension (for some of us who have been there 3+ years), vision, dental, paid education, etc.

Cons

Boeing is a very large company with very large projects. And, you'll find that it is much harder and will take longer to get things done the larger the project/company. Adding the fact that most projects in St. Louis are military, that complicates it even more. You would think that when you're working with military projects, you'd be working on the cutting edge of technology. But, because things take so long and there are so many outside dependencies, the end product has parts that are over 10 years old. We have a running office joke that we're at the "trailing edge" of technology. This isn't that big of a deal until you start thinking about leaving the company.

We have been going through some layoffs. And, there were some demotions. I do not blame the company for this. The economy was contracting and it gave a good reason to trim some of the lower performing workers off the books. As for the demotions, they were simply trying to reduce the number of managers that were probably promoted too quickly. Then, when we lost projects, and they ended up in positions with no people reporting to them. Unfortunately, they have learned their lesson and are making it harder for other employees to get promoted.

I would love to work for a smaller company but with that would come a lower salary and reduced benefits. So, I'm probably gonna be here for the rest of my career. That is, of course, if there aren't massive layoffs when/if the defense budget is reduced.

Advice to Senior Management

I wish I had some advice to fix all of the cons I listed. But, I believe this is just a problem of being a large company. You can try and make company wide processes to try and streamline things, but by the time those processes get flowed down 5 levels of management, you'll find out that every project is different and the process won't completely apply.